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LEWIS AND CLARK CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION 

PORTLAND, OREGON, JUNE TO OCTOBER, 1905 

H. W. GOODE. President H. E. REED, Secretary 



PROGRAM, ORGANIZATION AND ADDRESSES 



Lewis and Clark 
Educational Congress 



AUG. 28 TO SEPT. 2, 1905 

AUDITORIUM OF THE EXPOSITION 

Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. 



Auspices Lewis and Clark Congresses Committee and a Committee of 
Pacific Northwest Educators 



^ 



<(% 



Presses of 

Anderson & Duniway Co. 

Portland, Oregon 



MAR 24 1906 
D. of D. 



preface 

The Lewis and Clark Educational Congress was held August 
28 to September 2, 1905, mornings, from 9 to 12, in the Auditor- 
ium on the Exposition grounds, Portland, Oregon. It was one 
of a series of Congresses pertaining to the social welfare of the 
Pacific Northwest. The notable success of the Educational Con- 
gress was due chiefly to the fact that the Committee on Congresses 
secured the hearty and effective co-operation of the educators of 
Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, represented by a Gen- 
eral Committee of seventeen and in turn by an Executive Com- 
mittee of five. A bill was passed by the Oregon Legislature 
(Senate Bill No. 133) whereby the County Superintendents of 
Oregon were permitted to omit the annual county institutes for 
1905, and to apply the funds to the expenses of this Congress. 
About $2,000 was thus accorded, sufficient to cover all the expense 
of procuring distinguished speakers for the Congress and to share 
in the expense of printing this volume. 

L^pon the pages immediately following may be found the 
committees, organization of the Congress, and the program as 
carried out. The proceedings of the Congress in detail are not 
given. It was very regrettably necessary to omit the addresses 
of the distinguished presiding officers and the addresses of those 
who had been invited by the committees to lead the discussions — 
everything, in fact, but the principal addresses. We hope that 
some other worthy medium of publication may be found for the 
noteworthy utterances of Professor J. R. Robertson, of Pacific 
University ; Professor H. D. Sheldon, of the University of Oregon ; 
Mr. B. W. Johnson, Director of Manual Training, Seattle, Wash- 
ington ; Honorable W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of 
Education (following Mr. Frank Rigler on Thursday), and Pres- 
ident S. B. L. Penrose, of Whitman College. 

The Committee regrets that it has been impossible to obtain 
the manuscripts of three important addresses, those of Professor 
A. H. Yoder, Mr. Frank Rigler, and Professor Samuel McCune 
Lindsay. The latter will be printed privately and distributed later. 

This volume will be sent to anyone making application to the 
Secretary of the Congresses Committee for the same and enclosing 
six cents for postage. 

W. G. ELIOT, Jr., 
Secretary Lewis and Clark Committee on Congresses, 

681 Schuyler Street. Portland, Oregon, U. S. A. 



Organisation ano program 

Lewis and Clark Congresses Committee — J. R. Wilson, Chairman ; 
W. G. Eliot, Jr., Secretary ; W. W. Cotton, W. L. Brewster, 
E. P. Hill, R. W. Montague, S. S. Wise. 

Executive Committee of Educators — J. H. Ackerman, Chairman, 
State Superintendent of Oregon ; R. B. Bryan, State Superin- 
tendent of Washington ; Miss May L. Scott, State Superin- 
tendent of Idaho; W. E. Harmon, State Superintendent of 
Montana ; W. N. Ferrin, D. A. Grout, J. C. Zinser. 

Committee of Educators — P. L. Campbell, President of the State 
University; W. N. Ferrin, President of Pacific University; 
Frank Rigler, D. A. Grout, C. L. Starr, J. C. Zinser, J. H. 
Copeland, E. E. Bragg; J. H. Ackerman, State Superinten- 
dent of Oregon ; R. B. Bryan, State Superintendent of Wash- 
ington ; Miss May L. Scott, State Superintendent of Idaho : 
and W. E. Harmon, State Superintendent of Montana. 

Committee of County Superintendents — R. F. Robinson, Chair- 
man ; M. C. Case, L. R. Alderman. 



program 

EDUCATIONAL CONGRESS. 

Held in the Auditorium, mornings, from 9 to 12, August 28 to 

September 2. 

Admission to this Congress was free through the street en- 
trance, this admission not including admission to the Exposition 
Grounds. 

Monday, August 28 — 

Administration Band. 

Address of welcome : Honorable A. L. Mills, of the Execu- 
tive Committee of the Exposition, on behalf of the Ex- 
position. 

Presiding Officer for the day : President W. N. Ferrin, of 
Pacific University. 

Convocation address : Honorable William T. Harris, LL. D., 
United States Commissioner of Education, Washington, 
D. C. 

Address : Honorable Andrew S. Draper, Commissioner of 
Education for the State of New York. Subject : "Unset- 
tled Questions in the Organization and Administration of 
Schools." 
Tuesday, August 29 — 

Vocal solo : Mrs. L. T. Chapman, of Pacific University. 

Presiding Officer for the day: Mr. E. V. Littlefield, Presi- 
dent of the Oregon State Teachers' Association. 

Address : President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of the University 
of California. Subject : "The Relation of the Pacific 
Coast to Education in the Orient." 

Discussion : Professor J. R. Robertson, of Pacific University. 

Address : Mr. F. Louis Soldan, City Superintendent of 
Schools, St. Louis, Missouri. Subject: "Education in 
a Democracy." 
Tuesday Evening, eight o'clock, at the Auditorium — 

Lecture by Mr. H. M. Leipziger, Supervisor of Lectures in 
the New York City Schools. Subject: "Adult Educa- 
tion and the Extension of the Schoolhouse." 
Wednesday, August 30 — 

Presiding Officer for the day : President E. D. Ressler, State 
Normal School, Monmouth. 



Address : Professor A. H. Voder, Department of Pedagogics, 
State University of Washington. Subject : "Social Con- 
ditions and Elementary Education." 

Discussion: Professor H. D. Sheldon, of the University of 
Oregon. 

Address: Mr. H. M. Leipziger. Subject: "Manual Train- 
ing." 

Discussion : Mr. B. W. Johnson, Superintendent of Manual 
Training in the Seattle public schools. 

In the evening a reception was tendered Honorable William 
T. Harris "at the Oregon State Building by the Associa- 
tion of the Commissioners of state educational exhibits. 
Thursday, August 81 — 

Mr. A. J. Church, City Superintendent of Public Schools for 
Baker City, Oregon, was the presiding officer for the day. 

Address : Honorable J. H. Ackerman, State Superintendent 
of Public Instruction for Oregon. Subject : "The Prob- 
lem of the Rural School." 

Address : M,r. Frank Rigler, Superintendent of the Portland 
Public Schools. Subject : "The Problem of Classifica- 
tion." 

Discussion : Honorable W. T. Harris. 
Friday, September 1 — 

Mr. R. F. Robinson, County Superintendent for Multnomah 
County, presiding officer for the day. 

General subject for the day: "Technical and Industrial Ed- 
ucation." 

Address : President E. A. Bryan, of the Washington State 
College, Pullman. Washington. Subject : "Higher Ag- 
ricultural Education." 

Address : Honorable Howard J. Rogers, Assistant Commis- 
sioner of Education for the State of New York. Subject: 
"Education in Reference to Our Future Industrial and 
Commercial Development." 
Saturday, September 2 — 

President Thomas F. Kane, of the University of Washington, 
Seattle, Washington, presiding officer for the day. 

General subject: "Colleges and Universities." 

Address : President P. L. Campbell, University of Oregon, 
Eugene. Subject : "Education and the State." 

Discussion : President S. B. L. Penrose, Whitman College, 
Walla Walla, Washington. 

Address : Professor Samuel McCune Lindsay, Wharton 
School of Finance and Commerce, University of Penn- 
sylvania. Subject : "Education for Efficiency and the 
Demands of Modern Business." 

Concluding remarks : Honorable ]"• H. Ackerman. 



CONVOCATION ADDRESS. 
By W. T. Harris. 



Fifty years ago enterprising people in Missouri conceived the 
idea of starting a railroad that should extend in time to the Pacific 
Ocean and connect this Western Coast line with the Mississippi 
Valley and the Atlantic Slope. 

This was the latest form of the heart-hunger for a country of 
wealth and abundance — gold and precious stones, and a fabulous 
king every morning powdered with gold-dust so that he was the 
shining one, as the word rajah indicates to the people who speak 
Sanscrit. The land of realized wealth was called India, and was 
sought by adventurous travelers from Europe to the East. And 
a way by sea around Africa was explored long before Vasco di 
Gama doubled its southernmost cape, not long after Columbus had 
executed the bolder plan of circumnavigating the world by sailing 
westward. Almost every navigator who followed the example of 
Columbus tried to find not America, but a western passage 
through America to India, the ideal land of wealth. They did 
not know of the great wealth in gold offered by the mines of the 
west coast of America, and were not satisfied with Mexico and 
Peru, but wished to get to the India of Eastern Asia, whose story 
they had read. 

Thomas H. Benton. Missouri's great statesman, standing 
in Lafayette Park in St. Louis recited his oration at the celebration 
of the beginning of the first railroad ambitious enough to call 
itself the Pacific Railroad, and for which the State of Missouri 
had contributed a large sum from its treasury. Pointing to the 
West along the line of the projected road, Benton said in his im- 
pressive manner: "There is the West, there is India." 

Early in our civil war the Pacific Railroad was pushed 
through to completion, on the western line from Chicago and 
connected by a branch with the Missouri Pacific. 

Little was it then thought that the Western Coast would itself 
be much richer than India has ever been, and that its commerce 
with the East would exceed the commerce of Europe with India. 
But surely there has come such a commerce to the East, and with 
it also a great commerce to Asia, six great trans-Pacific naviga- 
tion lines already and a prospective increase to a trade that will 
rival the domestic commerce with the Eastern and Central States 
of this Republic. 

Fifty years before Benton's famous address, Lewis and Clark 
had made the world-historical exploration of Oregon which you 



10 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

celebrate this summer in this gorgeous exposition of the arts and 
industries of all nations. 

Hence, too, this Educational Congress, happily conceived be- 
cause it celebrates one of the permanent aspirations that had its 
origin in the heart-hunger that led the people of Europe out in 
search of the land of the Golden King — a search which finally 
led, on all hands north and south, not to kingdoms, but to demo- 
cratic republics and to the local self-governments of America. 

The Crusades, the age of discovery, and the era of coloniza- 
tion, all came from the desire for an opportunity for self-activity 
on the part of the people as people. 

The realized nations of Europe were good and gave much 
opportunity, far more than had yet been realized by other parts 
of the world, but that was only a mere taste of freedom in thought 
and action, and there must arise on the distant borderlands such 
organized forms of opportunity as would satisfy the very ideal of 
free development on new lines — each man revealing his new 
thought by deeds. A mere taste of freedom led to full draughts 
of freedom. 

Man escapes from the too great pressure of tradition and 
too servile obedience to the past by migrating to the borderland 
of opportunity where he can do for himself. If his ideals are 
wise ones and he has skill, he will reap a rich reward ; if his ideals 
are unwise or his practical skill very small, he will reap poverty 
and all manner of misfortune. But in both cases his life will be 
a revelation of himself as an individual, and not a mere slavish 
execution of time-worn usages and modes of doing. 

The field of opportunity aids us to free ourselves from the 
weight of the past. But that servitude of the past is only one 
kind of slavery. Present needs and necessities furnish another 
kind of slavery, and the past helps to free us from the thraldom 
of the present, and this is the lesson of our Congress of Educa- 
tion here today. Education helps man to understand the past 
and to bring it to the aid of the present. All its discoveries, all 
its bitter experiences, all its great successes, go to the aid of man 
through education. His self-activity becomes fortunate if he can 
profit by the observations and thoughts and inventions of his 
fellow men. Great as he may be in ambition and in the raw 
material of an individual career, he will not succeed except in- 
sofar as he reinforces his individual might by the aggregate 
might of civilization — except as he reinforces the present by the 
past. 

Education has been and is the chosen instrument of success, 
for it can in the deftest manner give the new individual the 
knowledge of the progress of mankind in the conquest of nature 
by science and art, and the method of organizing people into 
free institutions by which they mutually reinforce one another. 



Convocation Address. 11 

Education changes the past from a tyrant to a friendly 
auxiliary — from an oppressive burden of blind customs to an 
illuminating theory which all may see, each for himself. 

Therefore it is that with the successful transplanting of civi- 
lization into the Western Continent the school has been found 
necessary for success. Opportunity is lost to the person who 
cannot command knowledge and skill and who cannot combine 
with his fellow men. 

Education gives man freedom, because it gives him insight — 
the ability to see and understand for himself both the past and 
the present, so that he can use them to build with. 

In the light of this movement of civilization towards the 
borderlands, and in the presence of this great exposition of re- 
sources and production, let us look at the work before this Con- 
gress which is laid out in the program of the five days coming, 
and briefly recapitulate some of its most important topics. 

The pupils and the work in the different grades are shown 
in the general exhibits of the Exposition. 

The discussions of this Congress will relate to the special 
interests of the schools today which center in such problems as : 

1. The substitution of the well-graded school for the rural 
ungraded school that exists in the sparsely settled districts. It 
is in process of being supplanted by the graded schools through 
the new device of transportation to the central school of the vil- 
lage. 

2. The makeshift teacher is being replaced by the profes- 
sionally trained teacher, who is a graduate of the normal school. 

3. The professional teacher has salaries above him reaching 
to $10,000 or more as the summit — the rank and file find it easy to 
get $600 and can, in fact, almost start with it. High school 
positions open 1,300 new ones a year, and 25,000 already 
reached — colleges and universities 1,000 new ones a year, and 
more than 20,000 positions exist already. Superintendents of 
city systems, 1,000 of them in cities of over 8,000 population, and 
about 1,500 of them in all. New cities are growing out of vil- 
lages from year to year. 

4. Transportation of pupils to village centers from the rural 
sparsely settled districts is in process of eliminating on a large 
scale the old ungraded school and installing the professional 
teacher in place of the makeshift teacher who comes in as a vol- 
unteer for a three months' service. 

Once begun, the transportation of pupils from ungraded 
schools to urban-graded schools will go on more and more rap- 
idly, affording thousands of new positions annually for profes- 
sional teachers, such as are trained in the normal schools. 

The normal schools graduate 8,000 pupils a year, and within 
fourteen years have graduated 113,000, most of whom are now 



12 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

teaching in graded elementary schools, high schools, and in col- 
lege work, at annual salaries sufficient to furnish a respectable 
living. 

5. Transportation of pupils solves the problem of the rural 
school. The growth of villages increases the number of ten- 
month schools. Railroads create centers of urban life, and com- 
munities that read the daily newspaper. The significance of 
graded schools is found in the time gained for recitation, for the 
cultivation of critical alertness, and for teaching how to study. 
The ungraded school had for its method individual in- 
struction, and not class instruction, which becomes a powerful 
instrument in graded schools. 

A population that remains in an old settled country — in its 
"fatherland'* — grows up in the grooves long ago fitted for it, 
and is not given to new initiatives or to the development of orig- 
inality. "Opportunity" is not found there in its most stimulating 
forms. 

Columbus discovered America, and an age of opportunity 
arose for all Europe for a period of 200 years — first an age of 
exploration, which was followed by an age of colonization. 

What in history is spread out over centuries and "written 
large on the blackboard of the universe," so that even the slow- 
minded may see it, gets realized, by and by, in each man's life 
in after ages, and now every family in the old centers of civili- 
zation — New York. Philadelpbia, Boston — sends its sons out to 
serve a business apprenticeship in the borderlands — Chicago, San 
Francisco, and Portland. Even London, Paris and Berlin send 
their sons to Australia, Madagascar, or the Argentine Republic. 
This age of opportunity which in history was once spread out 
over 300 years of Crusades, 200 years of discovery and coloni- 
zation of the New World — five centuries in all — is now taken 
up into the culture of every family, and is lived through within 
the compass of a single life. 

In a newspaper age, people have learned to watch from day 
to day the world-history unrolling on the wheel of time, reading 
its pages from day to day as they are lived and written. Thus 
the epic element enters human life in its everyday tasks, turning 
its prose into epic poetry. 

Tt is perhaps the greatest function of the common school that 
it fits out its pupils with an ability to read, and a habit of reading. 
Reading involves the capacity to recognize, by sight, words that 
existed before the school age only as sounds addressed to the 
ear. Tbe school makes the child eye-minded. He was only ear- 
minded before. He knew words only by ear, now he begins 
to know them by the eye. As ear-minded, he learned chiefly by 
hearsay, now, become eye-minded, he learns by the printed page, 
and like Heimdall, the gate-keeper of the Gods in the old Norse 



Convocation Address. 13 

mythology, he can hear all the movements in the wide uni- 
verse — he can hear the trees grow, yes, even the wool growing 
on the backs of sheep, the whisperings of the people in China, 
and India, in Russia and Japan. But the gift of hearing elevated 
to a high potency is not equal to this gift of eye-mindedness which 
can stop the rolling wheel of time and fix on its printed page the 
fleeting moment so that it is made permanent and can be recalled 
at pleasure from the past, or summoned hither from any remote 
distance. Eye-mindedness and not ear-mindedness can go beyond 
the colloquial vocabulary and master the technical vocabulary in 
which science can express with unmistakable accuracy its obser- 
vations, its experiments, and its reasonings. 

Let us consider some of these topics more in detail : 

The preparation of the teacher for his vocation is always a 
central problem in school management. 

In 1880 there were 240 normal students in each million of 
inhabitants ; in 1897 there were 936 in each million. 

The normal school, it may be said, has the general effect of 
making its pupils observant of methods. 

The ordinary persons sees results, but does not take note 
of the methods by which they are produced. Hence the teacher 
who has never received instruction in a normal school may hap- 
pen to be a good teacher, but it is quite unusual for him to under- 
stand how he secures his own results ; and he is not often able 
to profit by seeing the work of other good teachers, for he cannot 
readily see what method they use, not having acquired the habit 
of looking at methods. On the other hand, the normal school 
graduate seldom visits a successful school without carrying away 
some new idea, or at least, some new device of method. Hence 
normal school graduates continue to grow in professional skill 
for ten, twenty, or even thirty years, while it is said truly that the 
teachers not from normal schools usually reach their maximum 
skill in from three to five years. After that period degeneration 
is apt to set in because of the fixation of methods in ruts — -z. me- 
chanical habit grows on the teacher who does not readilv see 
how his mannerisms look to other people. 

Teaching as a makeshift occupation, such as we find it in 
rural schools, with three or four months' annual session, can 
never be of sufficient importance to cause young men and women 
to spend years at training schools in preparation for that work. 
Only places with annual salaries and with eight or ten months 
of teaching will warrant the establishment of normal schools, 
and the three years' course of preparation necessary to secure 
the qualification needed for the professional teacher. 

In order that we may provide good teachers there must be 
adequate salaries, and there must be annual salaries, and not 



14 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

monthly salaries such as are found in schools that have sessions 
of only three or four months. 

I am therefore glad to mention here that the average annual 
increase in higher education throws open nearly 1,000 new places 
a year in colleges and universities for teachers promoted from the 
secondary schools on being found to have the requisite skill and 
scholarship. There were in 1890, 7,918 professors and instructors 
in the colleges and universities of the United States, not count- 
ing the professional schools. In 1903 the number had risen to 
20,887. It started with less than 8,000 and had an increase of 
new places in thirteen years almost equal to 1,000 a year — 12,969. 
The secondary schools of the United States counted 16,329 teach- 
ers in 1890, and in 1903 counted 33,795. This increase gave 
17,466 new positions in thirteen years for teachers in public and 
private high schools. 

Besides these positions in colleges which are for a year 
of eight or nine months, and offer good salaries, the teacher's 
profession offers in the elementary and high schools and in the 
office of superintendent the following positions, reported from 
467 cities of over 8,000 population, to the special committee of 
which Col. C. D. Wright was chairman : 

Salaries. Position. 

$ 600 to $ 700 16,015 

700 to 800 11,064 

800 to 900 8,664 

900 to 1,000 4,424 

1,000 to 1,100 2,539 

1,100 to 1,200 1,486 

1,200 to 1,300 2,825 

1,300 to 1,400 1,166 

1,400 to 1,500 861 

1,500 to 1,600 766 

1,600 to 1,700 1,005 

1,700 to 1,800 227 

1,800 to 1,900 361 

1,900 to 2,000 233 

2,000 and over 1,918 

Total 53,554 

$500 to $600 14,193 

Under $500 17,728 

Adding the positions in colleges and universities, 20,887, to 
53,554 positions with salaries of $600 and above, we have a total 
of 74,441. 

It will be seen on inspection of the above table that there 
are 26,475 positions that pay $800 and upwards, which with the 
college positions make 47,362. 

Consolidation of Schools and Transportation of Pupils. 
The practice of consolidating two or more small schools and 
transporting the more distant pupils of the discontinued schools 



Convocation Address. 15 

to the central (usually graded) school at the public expense has 
been resorted to, either under specific provisions or under the 
general authority of the law, in the following states : California, 
Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, 
Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana (1903), 
Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North 
Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Ver- 
mont. Virginia (1903), Washington, Wisconsin, and Oregon 
(1903), twenty-seven states in all. 

Notable movements toward the consolidation of schools, but 
without the feature of transportation, have been recently inaugur- 
ated in North Carolina and Missouri. Some progress in the 
same direction has also been made in Louisiana. 

Consolidate rural schools by free transportation and provide 
for their instruction in graded schools with annual sessions of 
ten months, taught by teachers who have professional skill and 
who know how to make the class an instrument for the instruc- 
tion of each individual pupil in the class. 

Can a rural school with a good teacher be a good school? 
It will find in its ten, twenty, or thirty pupils all grades of ad- 
vancement, from the beginners at five years to those who have 
had seven or eight years of schooling, and attained the age of 
sixteen years or more. These pupils cannot be taught in classes 
to any great extent ; there must be many recitations, and conse- 
quently short ones. Let there be good teachers, and they will 
certainly accomplish more than poor ones. But what can a good 
teacher do in a five-minute recitation? One of the accomplish- 
ments of a trained teacher is his ability to probe the pupil's 
understanding of the lesson and set him thinking about the rela- 
tions of what he has just learned to what he has learned at a 
former time, either at school by study, or by experience, in the 
events of his life. But even the skilled teacher cannot, in a five- 
minute recitation, probe the pupil's knowledge of the lesson, and 
connect it with all its threads of relation. He cannot teach the 
pupil habits of deeper thinking. Moreover, the pupil, if he re- 
cites by himself, or in a class of two or three, does not gain the 
great advantages that come from reciting in a class of twenty 
pupils substantially equal in ability. For each pupil in a class 
learns as much from his fellow-pupils as from the teacher direct. 
He can see the one-sidedness of the recitations of his fellows. 
They have learned some things that escaped his attention, but 
have neglected others that he has learned well. There is too great 
a disparity between the pupil's view of a subject and the teach- 
er's view to make a thorough mutual understanding possible, 
except through the mediation of the. class. Each pupil learns 
more from the teacher's criticism of the work of the other pupils 
than from the criticism of his own work. 



16 Lezms and Clark Educational Congress. 

Every recitation reveals to the pupils of the class many points 
of view that they had missed in the preparation of their lessons ; 
some have missed this point and some that point. They learn 
also to criticise the text-book and overcome their superstitious 
reverence for what they find printed in books. 

The Growth of High Schools and Colleges. 

Before considering our next theme, "The Growth of High 
Schools and Colleges," I ask your attention to a definition of 
civilization. 

What right, it is asked, has one nation to impose its form 
on another by force, on the ground that its own is a higher 
form of civilization? What infallible criterion have we, asks 
another, by which we may be entitled to conclude that we have a 
higher civilization than the neighboring nations? Why is not 
the Indian civilization as good as ours ? Why is not the Chinese 
civilization, or the civilization of the Philippine Islands, as good 
as the civilization that calls itself the United States, or Great 
Britain, or France, or Germany? This is a serious question and 
needs to be understood if one is going to sit in judgment upon 
national conduct. 

I ask you, therefore, to consider with me the answer which 
can be made to the question, "What is it that makes one civilization 
higher than another? What is a high civilization, and what is 
the highest civilization ?" 

I offer a definition for civilization. It is this : A people is 
civilized when it has formed institutions for itself which enable 
each individual citizen to profit by the industry of all his fellow- 
citizens ; when it enables each individual to profit by the experi- 
ence and wisdom, the observations and the thoughts of his fel- 
low-citizens ; when it encourages each individual to enter upon a 
rational self-activity by which he contributes, either through his 
industry or through his observations and his thoughts, to the 
benefit of the people with whom he lives. 

This definition of civilization can be put in another form 
which shows its significance. Civilization enables man to con- 
quer nature and make it his servant ; to command the services of 
heat, light, electricity, and of 'all the inorganic elements ; to com- 
mand also the plant world or vegetation, for his uses ; to com- 
mand also the animal kingdom for the same service ; in short, 
to command the services of nature for food, clothing, and shel- 
ter. Besides this control over nature, civilization should give 
man access to the history of his race : access to its literature ; 
access to its scientific discoveries ; access to its "various inventions ; 
and, above all, access to its moral and religious ideals. Civiliza- 
tion, in short, should give man command of the earth, and likewise 
command of the experience of the entire race. 



Convocation Address. 17 

In the light of this definition we may approach the civiliza- 
tions as they actually exist and inquire how far they have realized 
the ideal, how high they have climbed on the ladder of civiliza- 
tion. At once we see how low the tribal civilization is as com- 
pared with the civilization of Great Britain, or France, or Ger- 
many. There is no tribal civilization on the face of the earth, and 
never was one, which could compare with these nations in its 
knowledge of the uses of mineral substances, chemical transfor- 
mations, and the natural forces such as heat, light, electricity, 
gravitation, etc. No tribe can possibly command the complete 
resources of the world as regards its vegetable and its animal life, 
the products of agriculture and the mines. The reason for this 
is that the tribe is too small, and the tribe from the very nature of 
its constitution can not co-operate with other tribes nor receive 
their help. It stops at a view of nature which is a mere supersti- 
tion. The tribe can climb only a little way up the ladder which 
leads to the control and command of all the substances and forces 
of nature. Consequently the tribe can not participate to any great 
degree either in the productive industry of the whole world or in 
its intellectual investigations and discoveries. 

Other forms of civilization above the tribe take rank as high- 
er or lower, according to the degree in which they realize this 
ideal of conquest over nature and complete intercommunication 
with the rest of the world. No nation that lacks a great com- 
merce can be so high in civilization as Great Britain or France. 
No nation that lacks railroad communication can be so high in 
civilization as the United States. No nation that lacks steam 
engines to perform its drudgery can be so high as the nation 
which has these things. 

Again, a nation that has no printing presses and that can not 
buy or read the books of the world can not be said to have a high 
civilization. And on this scale the nation that has the most print- 
ing, that makes the most books, and that reads the great books 
of the world is higher than the other nations. The ideal in this 
respect is that civilization should make it possible for each man 
to know the experience of all the past through science and litera- 
ture, and that he should be able to see, through the columns of 
a morning newspaper, the history as it is making, day by day, in 
all the lands of the world. 

Again, there is another criterion — a very important one. A 
nation may be very far advanced in its ability to control nature 
and to command access to the wisdom of the race ; but it may do 
this only for some classes of its citizens and not for all. Such a 
nation is not so highly advanced in its civilization as one that 
allows each of its citizens to participate in the product of the 
whole. The nation that gives schools to the humblest classes of 
its people as well as to its highest classes, and the nation which 



18 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

allows the humblest people to govern themselves under just 
laws, is a higher nation than one which separates the ruling class 
into a government apart from and above the mass of the people. 

The highest ideal of a civilization is that of a civilization 
which is engaged constantly in elevating lower classes of people 
into participation of all that is good and reasonable, and perpet- 
ually increasing at the same time their self-activity. 

High schools and colleges teach the grounds of our civiliza- 
tion ; the elementary schools provide the first rudiments. We 
often hear people ask whether a high school course of study 
is really practical, or only ornamental. Let us pause a moment 
to consider. There were 292,287 pupils in the United States pub- 
lic high schools, and 54,726 in private high schools, studying 
algebra, in 1900. 

Algebra is a difficult study, but it gives an insight into the 
construction of arithmetic. If a person in later life should forget 
his arithmetic he may readily reconstruct its rules, if he has 
studied algebra at some time in his youth for a year. He can 
perform far more difficult problems by its method than he ever 
could perform by simple arithmetic. No advanced course of study 
in mathematics can be pursued except by aid of algebra. 

Besides these students in algebra, there were 168,518 youth 
in high schools studying geometry. This branch shows the neces- 
sary structure of all bodies that exist in space. Algebra and 
geometry are tools of thought that enable man to control matter 
and motion. They are among the most practical of all branches 
for giving directive power. 

My attention was called to this practical phase of high school 
mathematics as applied to physics thirty years ago, when one of 
our high school boys in St. Louis, Mo., took a humble position in 
the water works office of that city. Some pipes in the lower part 
of the city, next to the river, burst, and the new ones by which 
they were replaced did not last long. This boy made a calcula- 
tion, and found that the pressure of 150 feet of water is something 
like sixty pounds to the square inch, and that this was more than 
the regulation pipe used could stand, and, on request of the man- 
ager, he made a formula by which the proper regulation standard 
of pipes could be fixed. This boy was promoted. 

Physics, or "natural philosophy," enrolling 118,936 pupils, 
describes and explains mathematically the various properties of 
matter and force, showing the structure of all kinds of machinery 
and giving an insight into electricity, steam, attraction of gravi- 
tation, the dynamics of water, the nature of the solar spectrum, the 
structure of the telescope, the microscope, and the like. 

Of all branches that have to do with the conquest of nature, 
by human industry, physics is the most important for the pupil. 



Convocation Address. 19 

In the languages, 65,684 pupils in high schools were studying 
French, 100,873 pupils studying German, 24,869 Greek, and 
314,856 were studying Latin. Latin is the stock out of which 
the southern languages of Europe are formed. Even the northern 
languages get the most important part of their vocabularies from 
it, namely, the technical words for the sciences and the words 
expressing fine shades of thought and refined emotions. Ever a 
brief study of Latin, say six months, is of immense value to enable 
one to be at home in the English language, of which three-fourths 
of the vocabulary is of Latin origin. 

Besides these language studies which deal with a knowledge 
of human nature, the high school gives other studies that help 
powerfully in the same direction : 238,134 pupils in high schools 
studied general history last year. 

This is an age of the conquest of nature by machinery. One 
hears gladly the strong speeches made by progressive men in 
favor of manual and industrial training — there ought to be free 
industrial schools enough to enable each youth to learn the trade 
of his choice without resorting to the tedious and wasteful process 
of apprenticeship. In the past thirteen years manual training has 
been provided for in 322 cities out of the 587 cities of over 8,000 
inhabitants, and there are 33,062 pupils enrolled in manual train- 
ing high schools. A little more than 5 per cent of all high school 
pupils in the United States are studying manual training. It 
ought to be possible for any middle-aged man or woman to attend 
an evening school or a day school and learn a new trade in a few 
weeks or months — or, what is of quite as much importance to 
them, learn how to improve themselves in the trades they have 
been following for twenty years without acquiring any consid- 
erable skill because of having no opportunity to learn the most 
approved new methods and manipulations. All this is true, but 
it remains a fact that the pupils who have well learned the com- 
mon school branches are far better fitted to use machinery than 
the illiterate laborers who have served their long apprenticeships 
of seven or even of twenty-seven years. 

The growth of high schools and colleges in the United States 
has been something enormous in the past thirty years. I quote 
here the comparison of 1890 with 1900. If we add the totals 
of higher education to those of secondary schools, in order to 
see what the country as a whole is doing in schools beyond 
the elementary grade, we find that in 1890 there were 8,053 
students in the million of population, who were pursuing ad- 
vanced studies, and that these 8,053 had increased in the decade 
to 12,588. 



20 



Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 



ENROLLMENT OF SECONDARY PUPILS. 
Ninth to twelfth year of course of study in the United States. 





1890. 


1900. 


In each million 
population. 




1890. 


1900. 


Private academies 

Public high schools 

Preparatory classes and 
special institutions. . . . 


94,931 
203,000 

69,109 


110,727 
520,000 

89,193 


1,576 
3,241 

1,115 


1,443 
6,832 

1,174 


Total secondary pupils 


367,040 


719,920 


5,872 


9,449 



TOTAL HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 





1890. 


1900. 


In each million 
population. 




1890. 


1900. 


Colleges 




son 


1 ?84 


Other higher education, 
professional and tech- 
nical 




1,301 


1,855 




Total higher 






2,181 


3,139 




Grand total secondary 
and higher 




8,053 


12,588 



The significance of these educational items cannot be fully 
appreciated without considering- the facts that I have hinted al- 
ready, namely, that the school gives the power to continue one's 
education with increasing skill throughout life. Even the illiter- 
ate grows, although slowly, in mental power by reason of his 
experience in life. But his experience is limited to what he can 
observe in himself and in a small circle of neighbors. But his 
school-educated companion who can read and does read, is all the 
time widening his mental view by what he gets from the printed 
page, and growing in accuracy of thought on account of it. Hence 
it happens, after fifty years of life, at the age of sixty years, the 
illiterate has grown as much by experience as he could' grow by 
one year of schooling, while his literate companion has grown at 
least ten times as much. 

So with the secondary pupil there are opened new windows 
out of which to observe man and nature — the windows of alge- 
bra and geometry, of physics and chemistry, of Latin and French 
or German, and of general history. He gets at least three times 
as much from the printed page of science or literature as the 
graduate of the elementary school, and his accumulation in the 



Convocation Address. 21 

course of fifty years is more than ten times that of his elementary 
companion, or 100 times that of the illiterate. 

In one year's time the high school graduate has not made 
very many applications of his knowledge, but as the years go on 
he starts new trends of observation, and follows out threads of 
causation and long paths of genesis in the growth of the things 
and events that come under his immediate observation. 

The student of higher education far surpasses the secondary 
student in his ability to see lines of causality and of genesis in 
facts and events, and his power to accumulate in his life experi- 
ence from year to year is far greater. His power to see the past 
in the present and to predict the future at a glance of the present 
situation seems miraculous, after fifty years of using his higher 
education. Just as Agassiz could see in the scale of a fish enough 
of its character to enable him to draw the fish, although he had 
not yet seen the fish, and just as Asa Gray could divine the his- 
tory of a tree from seeing it at a single glance, so in a thousand 
ways and in a thousand different provinces the old man who in 
youth has been trained in the college and in the professional school 
acquires powers of seeing things in their history and in their com- 
plex of relations. 

These are the considerations that make us rejoice at the 
recent unexampled increase of secondary and higher education, 
and it remains for us to say that this increase is likely to go on, 
because it is due to the growth of productive industry in the 
country. The use of water, steam, and electricity in the indus- 
tries is increasing the average annual production of each inhabi- 
tant. This accumulation of wealth enables our people to prepare 
their children in better schools and in longer periods of schooling. 

The average school term of the United States is only five 
years of 200 days each, or 1,000 days. The future will see this 
lengthened with the increase of wealth in the community. I do 
not think that the average production of wealth in 1800 could 
have been more than 10 cents a day for each man, woman, and 
child, but by '1850 it had risen to 30 cents a day, and in 1880 to 
44 cents ; in 1890 to 52 cents : in 1900 to 58 cents. The average 
amount of schooling will increase to ten years and more when, at 
some time in the future, we can produce a dollar a day for each 
inhabitant. 

The great work of the elementary schools impresses us when 
we consider its function in the industrial and political life of our 
nation. It makes public opinion possible. Instead of ninety-nine 
drudges producing raw material and one person working to fur- 
nish and diffuse directive intelligence, it will come to pass some 
time in the future that one man will, by the aid of machinery, 
furnish the raw material, another man's labor will make the useful 
articles of food, clothing, and shelter ; ten more will elaborate 



22 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

articles of comfort and luxury ; the rest, more than 80 per cent of 
the community, will take up vocations having to do with pro- 
tection and culture. 

The work of education is the direct work of helping individ- 
uals to help themselves. It does not go on as fast as it should, 
nor as far as it should. Our comfort is that it is making visible 
progress. The average complete school life for the entire nation 
is at present only 1,034 days for each person. This would give 
five years — each year of 200 days — enough to take a pupil through 
the primary schools of a city. Even Massachusetts, with all its 
schools, public and private, does not give enough schooling to 
amount to seven years apiece for its inhabitants. Some states of 
the union give only a little more than two years for an average. 
But it is worthy of note that Massachusetts, with nearly twice the 
average schooling per individual, produces nearly or quite twice 
the amount of wealth per individual, compared with the nation's 
average. In 1880 the census seemed to show that the average 
production of the whole nation was 40 cents per day for each 
inhabitant. That of Massachusetts came up to 80 cents. 

It is in view of the fact that the laborers who produce raw 
material are paid only one-half of the wages paid to those engaged 
in skilled industries, such as are carried on in cities, that we find 
the significance of this great exposition in the City of Portland. 

The symbols of the highest civilization are the railroad, the 
daily newspaper, and the school. Here we find the type of the 
bearer of civilization. It brings together the producer and the 
consumer. In the city the raw material brings the highest price, 
and the manufactured product is found at its cheapest price. 

The city makes combinations ; it seeks out the producer and 
buys his product, selling him its equivalent of the merchandise 
of the world. The city thus connects the people of its environ- 
ment with the world. The family that produces for itself its own 
food, clothing, and shelter is living on a low plane of civilization. 
It should produce some specialty for the market of the world, and 
exchange it for a share in all the productions of mankind. Each 
person consumes or partakes of the product of the world of uni- 
versal human society ; each, himself, contributes to the supply of 
all others. It is this process of intercommunication of each with 
all that is the essence of civilization. 

The family that produces all that it consumes does not enjoy 
luxury nor culture as the result of its labor. But when it has 
access to the market of the world through the mediation of the 
city, then it may have endless variety in what it consumes. By 
the division of labor, skill and productive power are increased, 
so that the share of each person is multiplied. Hence, each gets 
more than he gives to the world market. 



Convocation Address. 23 

Here we may see the vast significance of the school educa- 
tion in enabling the citizen who shares in the productions of his 
fellowmen to know his fellows, and understand their views of 
the world. It enables him to know their opinions, and to share 
in their spiritual productions as well as in their material produc- 
tions. It enables him to participate in the formation of national 
and international public opinion. 

Small as is the schooling given by our nation to its people, 
some four and one-half years apiece, it suffices to make reading 
and writing universal, and with them gives also a limited acquain- 
tance with the rudiments of arithmetic and geography. This 
fits the citizen to become a reader of the daily newspaper, and 
thus to bring him under an educating influence that will continue 
throughout his life. A newspaper civilization is one that governs 
by means of public opinion. The newspaper creates public opin- 
ion. No great free nation is possible except in a newspaper civi- 
lization. By aid of the printed page, the school-educated person 
makes present to himself daily the events of the world and lives 
an epic life. For the epic life is the life of nations. A certain 
portion of the day of each citizen is given to contemplating world 
events, and to discussing them. He sees the doings of his state 
and nation, and forms his own opinion. His opinion, in the 
aggregate with those of his fellow citizens, is collected and offered 
to the world by the newspaper. That our schools suffice to pro- 
duce a government by public opinion — this is a result of a higher 
order than the other good results which we have canvassed. To 
give people the power to readjust their vocations, and to climb 
up to better paid and more useful industries out of lives of drudg- 
ery, is a great thing, a sufficient reason in itself for establishing 
a public school system. But to give the people the power of par- 
ticipating in each other's thoughts — to give each one the power to 
contribute his influence to the formation of a national public 
opinion — is a far greater good ; for it looks forward to the mil- 
lenium, when no wars will be needed for the mediation of hostile 
ideas. 



24 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

UNSETTLED QUESTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATION 
AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SCHOOLS. 

By Andrew S. Draper. 

There are certain fundamentals of the American educational 
system which, it may well be said, are settled. They are settled 
by common thinking and universal acceptance ; by legislative sanc- 
tion and judicial determination. They are looked upon as the 
necessary basis of our political system ; as the essential support, 
guardian, and guide of a democratic form of government. 

For example : It is settled that our schools are to be free. 
They are to be supported at the common cost. All property is 
to contribute its share. They are to be open to all. There is to 
be nothing about them to which any may justly object on con- 
scientious 'grounds. They are to be managed and their particular 
character and accommodations determined and provided by the 
people in primary assemblages or by officers chosen by the people. 
It is accepted that they are subject to the legislative power in each 
state because they are supported by taxation, and the power of 
taxation is a sovereign power which can be exercised only by the 
legislature. The legislative power which levies taxes must ac- 
count for the manner in which the revenues are used. This 
logically results in very considerable legislative control and direc- 
tion over the schools, but the local interest in the schools is so 
great and so jealous of prerogative that the legislative powers go 
only to general and vital matters, while the real organizing, hous- 
ing, and administration of the schools is, and is likely to remain, 
local. It is settled that the power of the state shall undertake to 
assure a suitable school within accessible distance of every home 
and that each local community shall elaborate and embellish its 
particular school as far as the majority rule will authorize or 
permit. It is settled that there shall be a free high school in every 
considerable town and a free university in every state unless an 
endowed university is already upon the ground and in some 
measure meets the public needs. It is settled that all grades of 
schools shall articulate together with some exactness ; that instruc- 
tion shall be continuous from the primary school to the graduate 
school in the university, and that all pupils shall be encouraged 
to go as far and as high as they will. It is fundamental, though it 
has not always been so, that girls shall have the same rights as 
boys in the schools. It is settled that the legislature may provide 
for training teachers, and establish the methods, the standards, 
and the authority for determining their qualifications ; may also go 
as far as it pleases in appropriating moneys directly to the support 
of the schools or in fixing the sums which localities must raise, ab- 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 25 

solutely or conditionally ; and may go further and create such 
supervising officers and such machinery for promoting effective 
teaching as it pleases. 

The vital American principle that there shall be no organic or 
financial relation between the state and any church, between a 
school supported in whole or in part by taxation and any sectarian 
interest, has a decisive bearing upon the affairs of the public 
schools. 'The state will encourage every movement or enterprise 
which promises to be of advantage to any factor in the population 
by giving its sanction and approval thereto, but it will not enter 
into any business or moneyed relation with any class or faction as 
against any other, and it will not divest itself of any part of its 
power and function to deal with all sectional, class, religious, or 
partisan interests with exact and impartial justice. Accordingly, 
the public schools are common to all, must avoid all entanglements, 
and, in the fullest practicable measure, must be of equal advantage 
to all. 

It is not possible, nor # desirable, to enumerate all of the 
foundation principles of the common school system. They are 
easily traceable to the essential principles of our federal and state 
constitutions, to the settled doctrines of the common law and to 
the uncontroverted usages which have grown up in the thought 
and the public life of this country. Wherever the developing 
educational system comes in contact with these headlands of our 
political theory and our system of jurisprudence it will be well 
to understand at once that the educational system will have to 
adjust itself to them. These fundamental principles are well 
"settled,"' and, so far as the features and phases of the school sys- 
tem relate to such principles, they will have to be considered 
"settled" also. 

Aside from this, nothing is settled beyond recall and nothing 
has gone beyond the possibility of change. Indeed, the adapta- 
bility and effectiveness of the scbools depend upon unceasing 
modifications which are in keeping with the new conditions which 
are constantly arising, the new educational experiences which 
continually crowd upon us, and the new purposes and outlooks 
which are every day opening up to us. 

We can not too often point out that our educational progress 
is measured by the freedom and confidence with which we do 
things, provided we keep sane, have proper respect for what our 
predecessors have done, and do not make changes for our own 
diversion or for the mere sake of a change. Men who would make 
a minor position in the school system the means of attracting at- 
tention or gaining notoriety, men who can destroy and not con- 
struct, men who are more ambitious than useful, often make 
trouble by supporting all sorts of changes in the schools. That 
is one of the difficulties with which a democracv has to contend. 



26 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

But that is only a difficulty in administration, and not a real ques- 
tion in constructive or administrative policy. Happily, the school 
system has gone beyond the point where such men can do it much 
harm. They are powerless to do much good or harm. Any real 
problem in the organization and administration of the schools 
will have to be met by experts in education — men and women who 
know the history and have studied the philosophy of education, 
who realize the under-running currents of American life, and are 
desirous of shaping the schools to the purposes of a nation which 
is bound to give every one his chance and whose public policies 
and educational instrumentalities must aid and encourage every 
child of the republic to make the most of his chance. Such men 
and women need not fear to take the initiative in meeting any 
new questions which may arise in the school system, or to make 
any changes which, after discussion, are supported by anything 
like a consensus of opinion. The life and virility of the educa- 
tional system depend upon their doing so. 

I am to suggest — but must leave it to you to settle, if they 
are to be at once settled — some of the problems which now seem 
to confront the American school system. Presenting them with 
sufficient detail to disclose their reality, I shall not feel called 
upon to sustain one view or another with arguments, or even to 
indicate any opinion of my own concerning their solution. 

It is an open question how much initiative and control shall 
be exerted by the state and how much shall be left to the locality 
concerning the schools. Of course, since the public school 
system has come to be supported by taxation and the power of 
taxation can not be exercised except by the sovereign authority of 
a state, there is no question about the state having ample power 
to do what it will about the schools. But there is very serious 
question about the measure of direction which the state ought 
to impose. People learn to do by doing. An officer bearing the 
appointment and exercising the authority of the state may know 
more about educational organization and administration than a 
local school meeting or local official may be expected to know, or, 
knowing, may be able to do. He may do things better than they 
will be done without him. Yet, if he initiates and supervises 
everything, the people will come to depend upon him, and will in- 
variably look to the state to do what would broaden and strengthen 
them if they would do for themselves. On the other hand, people 
need educational intrusion from the outside. It often happens 
that a community thinks that it has the very best schools, when it 
has almost the worst. The difficulty is that it can not see, and of 
course it can not do. How are state control and local self-initia- 
tive and administration to be balanced with the best results ? 

Very akin to this question is another, as to the measure of 
money which the state should provide for the support of the 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 27 

schools, and the amount which should be left to each city, town, 
or district to supply. In many states the support of the schools 
is left altogether to the locality. In others a very considerable 
sum is distributed annually on some basis which requires the 
stronger sections to aid in some measure the weaker ones, and 
so equalize educational advantages over the state. The City of 
New York, for example, pays annually about a million and a 
quarter of dollars to aid other sections of the state which are 
financially weaker. Of the legal competency of the legislature 
to exact this there can be no question. Of the substantial aid 
to the rural districts of the state there is no doubt. But people 
are never satisfied with the amount of money which they get for 
nothing. The more they get the more they demand, the more 
they come to depend upon it, and the less they will be willing to 
raise for themselves. It is clear enough to me that in education 
the stronger and wealthier sections of a state ought to help the 
weaker and poorer ones. But, in justice to themselves, the 
weaker ones should not be allowed to take all they will. How are 
the state and the local support to be adjusted so as to assure the 
best schools in every section and promote the highest interests of 
an entire commonwealth? 

Again, if the state is to raise and distribute funds for the 
support of local schools, how is the distribution to be adjusted as 
between the primary, secondary, and higher schools? There are 
some precious souls who, if they are in favor of anything educa- 
tionally, think they are for the "three R's" exclusively, or, at 
most, they are for anything beyond the "three R's" only when the 
need of their being for it has wholly passed away. Yet we know 
very well that a mere ability to read and write and cipher does not 
sustain intellectual life and democratic institutions anywhere in 
this country now ; and we know quite as well that the excellence 
of the primary schools is dependent upon the prevalence and 
efficiency of the secondary schools. Schools are of little worth 
without schools above them ; thus it is to the very limits of knowl- 
edge and of teaching power. But the secondary schools are more 
costly than the elementary schools, and the higher are more ex- 
pensive than the secondary. How is the state to use its power 
so as to balance the school system, assure an equitable distribution 
of the different grades and so secure the best results which wis- 
dom can devise? 

Yet again, how is the teaching force to be made the best 
possible? There are more who want to teach than there are 
places. The pay is not large, but the work allows considerable 
leisure and satisfies pride. The unprepared ones are to be shut 
out. But who are prepared and who are unprepared? Some 
who know less that is found in books than others do are better 
teachers than the others are. Surelv some who are not verv 



28 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

successful in passing examinations are acceptable teachers. Some 
definite scholastic attainments are necessary, according to grade. 
Some general culture is imperative, regardless of grade. What 
parent wants to send his child to a coarse and mannerless teacher, 
no matter how much he knows of some things? Some pro- 
fessional training in educational theory and in teaching methods 
is requisite. Then there is the matter of spirit and finally of 
adaptability. But this refers to the individual teacher. How 
is the morale of the whole force to be uplifted? It can not be 
done through indifference and inattention. It will not move for- 
ward of its own motion. It can not be done through political 
officers who know less themselves than they are bound to exact 
of the teachers. It can not be done through examinations alone, 
and it can not be done without examinations. It can not be done 
with a rush, and it can not be done through harshness to worthy 
and deserving teachers. It is a matter of sound plan, steadily 
followed for a long time. How is the plan to b.e determined upon, 
and bv what method is it to be carried to a meritorious conclusion ? 

Then there is always the unsettled question of competent 
supervision. The office of school superintendent is an American 
creation. In other constitutional countries the schools do not 
attempt as much as ours do ; the teachers are men with life tenure 
who follow the instructions of the government minister of educa- 
tion in all things ; the work is routine ; the habit of attendance 
by young children in primary schools is universal ; there is no 
mixing of classes and no articulation of schools, and the results 
place the percentage of illiteracy lower than in this country. With 
us the curriculum is long and diversified ; we instruct all classes 
of children and we do it in the same schools ; our teaching force 
is changeable, not so professional in character and often over- 
taxed. We have tried to overcome difficulties by general super- 
vision, and in a measure we have succeeded. But the really pro- 
fessional superintendent is largely without legal authority, and 
the political superintendent, who often survives in the rural dis- 
tricts, is frequently without professional efficiency. Generally 
speaking, whenever there is a professional superintendent he is 
subject to an unprofessional board which is not without self- 
confidence in all that concerns the schools. In a word, we have to 
contend with the disadvantages of democratic government, and 
that fact sometimes obscures the other fact, particularlv to 
teachers, that there are more advantages than disadvantages in 
government by the people. 

The legal and authoritative prerogatives of school superin- 
tendents, both in city and country, is an unsettled matter in Ameri- 
can education. Under the prevailing conditions, and conditions 
which are inherent and not quickly to be changed, supervision is 
highly important. It is not too much to say that the value of 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 29 

the instruction is very dependent upon its professional qualities 
and closeness. Aptness in supervisory leadership is not wholly 
dependent upon the same qualities which make for effectiveness 
in teaching. Then how are we to get adequate training and ex- 
perience in a sufficient number of men and women to supply the 
needs? And how are we to treat superintendents, concerning 
functions, responsibilities, and compensation, so as to secure and 
retain true manliness and real womanliness, decorated with the 
qualities which vitalize professional leadership, and shorn of the 
attributes of mere schoolma'amishness in supervisory positions? 

To be a little more specific, what are to be the standard at- 
tainments of superintendents ? How much are they to have to do 
with appointing or removing teachers, with framing courses of 
instruction, with adopting text-books, with determining disputes, 
with regulating the progress of pupils, and with developing the 
morale and spirit and power of the schools? How are they to be 
saved from humiliation by directors and trustees who have legal 
prerogatives, but no knowledge of the delicate and perplexing mat- 
ters involved in the administration upon modern lines of mixed 
and ambitious schools? How is there to be any supervision 
worthy of the name in the country districts? With the new 
means of transportation and communication, is it not pretty nearly 
time to eliminate the "rural school problem" altogether, to take a 
more advanced position concerning the professional standing of 
the rural superintendent or commissioner, and to make supervisory 
districts in the farming sections of a size which will permit real 
superintendence and enable all the teachers to come in once a 
month and sit around a table for discussion and for instruction? 
Surelv these are unsettled questions which will have to be worked 
out slowly in the further evolution of our public school system. 

The size of the school district in the farming regions has 
been much in discussion for several years. From the settlement 
of the country the school district outside of the towns has been 
small enough to place a school house within walking distance 
of every home. To be sure, the walk has often been a long one, 
but the whole world is relative and it has not seemed so long to 
those who had to make it as to the less hardy people in the cities. 
As fast as the country was settled, or the distance became im- 
practicable by reason of new homes, another district was created 
and a new school house built. Now there is something of a 
movement to make larger districts and to consolidate districts, 
carrying the children to and from school when necessary, in order 
to have larger schools, more elaborate buildings, and graded 
courses of instruction. This movement has not, by any means, 
gone so far as to become a policy. Many arguments have been 
adduced in its favor. The ones opposed have not been much pre- 
sented. Thev can not be fullv brought forward here. But such 



30 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

questions as the following are surely not impertinent in this con- 
nection : 

Are we altogether certain that a large school is better than 
a small one, or a graded than an ungraded one? Is not the 
essential difference in the teaching and in the supervision, and 
may not efficient instruction be assured in the small country dis- 
trict, by a course less open to objection? 

Is it, considering the exigencies of carriage and of weather, 
well to require young children to go farther from home than is 
imperative ? 

Is it better to centralize and complicate administrative ma- 
chinery, with the necessary delegation of the authority for main- 
taining the schools from the people in primary assemblages to 
their representatives and officials, or to keep control as close to the 
people as possible and in the simplest forms compatible with 
efficiency? May not the district schools be expected to meet the 
circumstances and the elementary needs of its immediate con- 
stituency very well indeed, and is not the matter of maintaining 
the school house and of providing for the modest expenses of the 
schools likely to keep the people more interested in the schools 
than they will naturally be if the school is more remote and the 
measure of their control is lessened? Can not any real difficulty 
be met by continuing elementary schools as heretofore and by 
supplementing them by central high schools? Is it not better to 
continue the unit of district school administration as it prevails 
over large areas of the country, as far at least as local control over 
the location and the character of the building and providing for 
expenses are concerned, and by making a different unit for super- 
visory purposes which may be large enough to get a strong 
enough superintendent and yet not so large in miles as to make 
real supervision impracticable? Is not the real difficulty in the 
country politics and the size of the supervisory district and lack of 
professional control over the teacher and the teaching, rather 
than in the size of the school district? Is the location of an ele- 
mentary school within the smallest practicable distance from everv 
home, and the possession of a popular meeting place by the 
smallest hamlets and the cross-roads regions to be surrendered 
without the most imperative necessity or until it is clearly proved 
that the change of plan does not involve greater difficulties than 
any which are now pending? These interrogations do not neces- 
sarily negative the policy of consolidation, but it seems to me that 
they are sufficient to suggest that it is very much within the zone 
of unsettled questions. 

There is at all times a sufficient supply of unsettled ques- 
tions concerning the development of a uniformly virile teaching 
service, both in city and country. It must be said that teaching 
, does not attract the larger number of forceful characters. The 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 31 

compensation is insufficient and the opportunities for distinction 
are held to be lacking. Men have very generally ceased to pre- 
pare themselves for teaching, and the same is largely true of the 
more ambitious women. No one can question that the best in- 
terests of the teaching service claim as much of the masculine as of 
the feminine mind, beyond the primary schools at least. No one 
can doubt the need of the most aspiring women in the schools. 
Any great work among large numbers of both sexes requires the 
co-operative help of both men and women and of the strongest 
and most expectant men and women in the world. The ordinary 
conditions of the teaching service do not make for this. And 
there has been in recent years a remarkable educational develop- 
ment which, indirectly but strongly, opposes it. That is the ex- 
pansion of the colleges and universities so as to prepare for all 
of the professions, and the multiplying of vocations for educated 
and aggressive men and women. Moreover, the colleges, perhaps 
unintentionally, prepare for every other vocation better than for 
teaching, and their indirect influence is against teaching. Uni- 
versity teachers are not very familiar with modern work in the 
lower schools, and the interests of their own special branches 
displaces any serious concern for a unified organization or an all 
around service in the schools below. They are not only more 
interested in the pupils who are going to college than in those who 
are not, but also in the pupils who are headed for their depart- 
ments more than in those who are likely to elect other branches 
for future study. All this is turning nearly all the men and many 
of .the best women, who in other times would have looked to 
teaching as a vocation, to other work, and it is lessening the in- 
dependence and effectiveness of the teaching force to a degree 
which is hardly compensated for by the larger knowledge of 
educational principles and the improved methods of the modern 
agencies for training teachers. The live question is, how are we 
to assure a teaching force which shall be free from specially de- 
fective factors and generally as capable and spirited and aggres- 
sive as that which manages the other great, though less important, 
intellectual activities of the nation? Always a pressing ques- 
tion, the growing importance and the growing difficulties of the 
subject make it more weighty now than at any previous time. 

However important the form of the legal school organiza- 
tion, and however imperative the character of the men and women 
who teach the schools, there is nothing about the schools so vital 
and, it may also be said, so difficult, as a sound determination of 
what work the schools shall do. 

The minister of education in other countries does not have 
a very hard time deciding what the primary schools shall do and 
how it shall be done. He does it alone. He follows either the 
law or loner and unchangeable usasfe. The teachers are men and 



32 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

the tenure of position is for life. Every teacher obeys the min- 
ister's directions without question. He has to provide a simple 
curriculum for children of the peasant class who expect to live 
exactly as their fathers have lived. The work is not to inspire 
children to do their best and rise to high places among their fel- 
lows ; it is not to fit them for the work of advanced schools ; it 
is to drill them to read and write and work through very or- 
dinary and dead-level lives. It satisfies the demands of the rather 
slow-going and monotonous life of the people whom these foreign 
schools serve. 

It is wholly different in America. Our schools are not shaped 
and managed by a minister, a cabinet, or a monarch, but by the 
people. The common thought and general usage have settled the 
outlines of the system. Each community fills in the details and 
carries them as far as it will. Everybody has a proprietarv 
interest in the schools. The administration is through popular 
elections, and changes in administration are frequent. Changes 
in the teaching force are frequent also. There is not much re- 
sistive power. Every one with a project thinks the schools ought 
to carry it out. It is not so hard for one with a scheme to load 
it upon the schools as it is for an administrative officer or a teacher 
to keep it out. People who mean well, but who are without any 
grasp of the general problem, often turn the course of the schools 
aside »from its ordinary and natural channel. 

From the standpoint of school administration, every Ameri- 
can child is bred in the purple. He is to have everything that 
the richest child in the world can have in the way of instruction 
if he will take it, and all of the fixed influences, direct and in- 
direct, censure him if he neglects to take it. Every boy must 
infer from all be hears that he will be discredited unless he follows 
an exclusively intellectual pursuit, and every girl must believe 
that her happiness depends upon her becoming literary and know- 
ing about art and the opera, and wearing silks and directing 
servants — when the silks are often elusive and always illusory 
and the servants are more elusive and illusorv still. 

All classes mix in our schools. As I passed a ward school 
the other morning I saw two little girls, whom I recognized, pass 
in at the same time. One was the daughter of a prominent 
officer of the state and the other was the daughter of my office 
messenger. The association was quite as good for the child in 
the higher social station as for the one in the lower. It will do 
something to keep the first sane. The second will be most in- 
fluenced by the foibles and fancies rather than by the substance 
and the real graces of the other. 

At the annual meeting in a little school district, both rich and 
rural, on Long Island, held the other day, the accomplished wife 
of one of the wealthiest men of the country, whose name is 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 33 

familiar to all, and the village liverykeeper were elected trustees 
of the district school. There was something of a contest, and 
they were both supported by the same votes. The woman stood 
for something very decisive in the betterment of the school. It 
was an admirable result. They will doubtless be of substantial 
service to each other and to the public in caring for the school. 
Each will surely learn something worth knowing from the other. 
In a common service they will be more tolerant of each other, and 
a rational service may lead two lots or "bunches" of people to see 
more that they like in each other than they had before realized. 
In an European school, or in the management of one, such asso- 
ciations would be wholly impossible and the manifest advantage 
would be absent. But the European political and educational 
systems are not intended to bind classes together or to give every 
one an equal chance with every other. 

We have a continuous and pretty well articulated school sys- 
tem, from the kindergarten to the university. Teachers and chil- 
dren are continually enjoined to be thinking of the next school 
above. A teacher whose pupils do not pass is discredited. A 
child who does not pass is in peril of being eternally lost. This 
may not be really so dreadful to the individual teacher and the in- 
dividual child, though each thinks it is. It may be as well to 
have some pressure as to have everything fall down and every- 
body become lackadaisical for the want of attention. But does it 
not inevitably attach more significance to the upper than to the 
middle schools? Does it not assume that the road to college and 
the road to glory are all the same? 

And are they ? No thinking man can doubt the self-satisfac- 
tion and enlarged intellectual enjoyment which commonly result 
from college training. No one will be disposed to deny the ad- 
vantage which the liberally educated and disciplined mind has in 
severe mental work and particularly in intellectual combat. No 
one can fail to see how the higher institutions break out new 
roads and lead the thinking of the world to higher planes. And 
surely no school man can ignore the fact that the vitalizing, the 
energizing, and the steadying of the lower schools must necessarily 
come from the higher schools. But there are those who will deny 
that it is desirable that all children shall go to college. There 
are enough who do not think that it is better to have a college 
degree and admission to a profession, with little adaptation to it 
and little to do after it, than it is to master a manual vocation and 
have plenty to do. There are folks in the world who dare to 
suspect that many a one becomes really unbalanced and pretty 
nearly useless through college teaching and college study, when 
he might have been happy and useful if conditions and normal 
inclinations had been regarded and if he had found himself in a 
work where he could have had the reward and the jov which 

2 



34 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

come from accomplishing things. There are those who even 
venture to suspect that men and women with work which they 
love and the steadiness and balance and respect which they gain 
by doing it are safer citizens and more attractive characters than 
men and women who have been through the schools without be- 
ing able to put the training of the schools to the doing of things 
which are of moment to the world. 

It is not a matter of the value of the higher learning to the 
world at large ; it is a matter of the power and purpose of each 
individual to make it of most use to himself. The unambitious 
or the incapable rich, who are not in danger of doing much any- 
way, may as well go to college, if they can be kept from ruining 
the colleges while there. The rich who have work and sand in 
them will ordinarily seize upon college training while they enlarge 
the substance and illustrate the point and power of it. The poor 
must balance values ; they will coolly calculate the worth of it to 
any plans which they may have, or they will leave it to chance 
and take whatever the consequences may be. If there is some- 
thing like a definite purpose in mind, if the college training is 
put to a real use, the consequence will be a finished and resource- 
ful character, and the harder the work and the more the sacrifices, 
the stronger and the more dependable the character will be. If, 
however, there is no serious plan or purpose about it all, no power 
to appreciate and adapt the college training and discipline, the 
result will be a past master in dudism so long as one has the 
money to sustain the role, or a misfit and partial, or total, failure 
when one must earn his living. 

The percentage of men who have reached the highest posi- 
tions of leadership and influence without the training of the most 
advanced schools, as compared with those who have had that 
advantage, is surprisingly large. It is because they have had the 
stuff in them and it has been developed and seasoned in life. They 
have not depended upon books or been largely controlled by 
theories ; they have squared their lives with the actualities of liv- 
ing ; they have been both patient and aggressive ; they have found 
the way to accomplish something worth while. It was something 
not set forth in the books. But this has been suggestive to the 
colleges and the courses of study, the characteristics of teachers, 
the methods of instruction, and the atmosphere of the places have 
been so radically modified in the interests of doing as against 
talking, that, aside from the increased number of students who 
go to college, the advantages to the college man as against the 
other is very substantially enlarged. And, of course, with an 
independent, sane, and balanced character, having the elements 
of strength and success anyway, the advantages of a college train- 
ing can not be overestimated. 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 35 

It is not true that good citizenship is gauged by the depth of 
culturing study or familiarity with philosophical theory. It rests 
upon the balanced sense which is the joint product of decent 
breeding, of familiarity with men and things, and of the labor 
which shows in things accomplished, either manual or intellectual, 
and in sweat upon the brow. The man who mends your shoes 
or makes your clothes is likely to average just as safe and potential 
a citizen as the one who tries to train your refractory stomach, the 
one who fills you up with economic theory, or the one who sup- 
plies theological deductions to your mystified soul. The one who 
produces physical results in life is certainly no less to be counted 
upon than the one who writes the more freely when he is not 
obliged to be troubled with any facts. 

These considerations are at the bottom of the widespread 
criticism against our public educational system. Everybody 
worth considering knows that the mere ability to read and write 
is no adequate equipment for efficiency in our complex life, but 
everybody also knows that no system of training, no matter how 
elaborate, which leads inevitably to pursuits which are exclusively 
intellectual or only culturing, will sustain our complex civilization. 
It is right here that the plan and scope of our Western univer- 
sities, very largely state universities, is pushing them strongly to 
the front rank in American higher education. The feeling is 
very common that there is no sufficient reason why the courses 
of study and the influences of the lower schools should lead de- 
cisively to the higher institutions which are only culturing or 
professional, or to those departments of universities which are 
essentially so. There is a strong and justifiable sentiment that 
the work of the elementary and secondary schools does not sup- 
port the industrial as well as the classical or professional depart- 
ments in the universities which have provided for all phases of 
human learning. There is a strong and sustained sentiment that 
the elementary schools ought to do more for the pupils who are 
not going to college at all, if the advantages of our popular sys- 
tem of education are to be equal for all. And there is a decided 
and a justifiable belief that the elementary schools, taken as a 
whole, train for versatility more than for exactness, and that — 
either because of this or because they have been loaded with too 
much, or both — they do not turn out pupifs who can do any 
definite thing very satisfactorily when they must go to work. 

If I interpret the situation correctly, the common sentiment 
of the country fullv sympathizes with the old-line literary col- 
leges.. It feels that there is a place for them, and wishes them 
well. It has abundantly demonstrated its decisive support of 
university training in aid of the industries. But it demands that 
the elementary training shall lead more decisively to the industries 
and to business, whether pupils are going to the advanced schools 



36 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

or are going to work ; and that the work of the lower schools shall 
be sufficiently concentrated and made sufficiently exact to support 
the expectation that pupils shall be able to read intelligently, write 
legibly, perform mathematical processes readily and correctly, 
and entertain serious notions of real work when they leave the 
schools. The objection is not that the schools do other things, 
but that they do not do these things before the other things, and 
that the result amounts to a discrimination against the industrial 
masses and the very ones who stand most in need of free educa- 
tion. 

Then the whole question as to what the schools shall do is 
an open one. Apparently, they must have less, rather than more, 
to do. If not, then a large part of the children must have less. 
It would seem that there will have to be more differentiation of 
courses, with reference to future living. There will have to be 
more drill and more firmness of treatment in the purely elemen- 
tary work at least. The work will have to be adapted to years 
so that whenever a child leaves school he may be able to do very 
well what the world may justly expect of one of his age. There 
will have to be more exact attention to present actualities than to 
remote possibilities. It would not be strange if the lower schools 
were yet required to give every child not only the means of in- 
forming himself and of expressing himself, but also a definite 
trade or vocation through which he may earn a living. This 
would be doing less for the children who will never go to college 
than most of the larger towns are already doing for those who go 
to the high school, or than most of the states are alreadv doing 
for the thousands who go to the state universities. 

Here is the great, overwhelming, and difficult question in 
American education. I surely could not settle it. We might 
discuss it in this Congress for a month, and we could not settle it. 
It is to be settled out of the abundant experience, the democratic 
purpose, and through the natural and logical unfolding of the 
free life of the nation. 

There is another unsettled question, and clearly a very serious 
one, to which I must advert. It has reference to nonattendance 
upon the schools. It will not do to assume that all in this free 
country who ought to go to school will do so. All parents are 
not anxious about the educational welfare of their children. Some 
parents and children will wallow in ignorance unless thev are 
punished for not taking advantage of the schools. And the 
worst of it is that the very common sentiment seems to be seriously 
indifferent to the compulsion. 

The most recent data available to me shows the percentage 
of illiterate electors in England to be .009 per cent, and the per- 
centage of illiterate recruits in the German army to be .0.5 per 
cent. In France 4.4 per cent of men and 6.3 per cent of women 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 37 

signed the marriage register with a cross. In Switzerland .33 
per cent of the men entering the military service were illiterate. 
The last report of illiterate conscripts in the army of Holland 
shows that it was 2.1 per cent and in the army of Sweden it was 
.08 per cent. 

Now let us examine the figures of the United States census of 
1900, showing the percentage of illiteracy among males of voting 
age in the United States. In the country at large it was 10.9 
per cent. In the North Atlantic division it was 6.8 per cent ; in 
the South Atlantic division it was 24.5 per cent ; in the North 
central division it was 4.9 per cent ; in the South Central division 
it was 23.3 per cent, and in the Western division it was 6.7 per 
cent. That is, in no one of these great divisions of our country 
is the showing so favorable as in any one of the countries I have 
named, and generally speaking it is so much worse as to shame us. 

Take several typical states from east to west : In Massa- 
chusetts the percentage of illiterate potential voters is 6.4 ; in New 
York, 5.9 ; in Ohio, 4.8 ; in Illinois, 4.8 ; in Iowa, 2.7 ; in Nebraska, 
2.5 ; in Colorado, 4.1 ; in Montana, (i.l ; in California, 6.2, and in 
Oregon. 4.8. Taking states from north to south: In Michigan 
it is 5.5; in Indiana, 5.6; in Kentucky, 18.8; in Tennessee, 21.7; 
in Alabama, 33.7, and in Georgia, 31.6. In no American state 
is the showing so satisfactory as in England, in the German Em- 
pire, in Switzerland, in Holland, or in the Scandinavian countries. 

I can not analyze and exploit this all-important subject here 
as 1 shall endeavor to do in another place at no distant day. But 
here it may be said that there is abundant evidence of a serious 
difficulty in the indifference of public sentiment or in the character 
of our educational legislation or in the execution of it. And it 
may be added that, no matter how great our revenues or our 
energy or our genius for doing things, no matter how rich, how 
strong, how commerciallv successful we become, we shall not 
honor ourselves nor illustrate the advantage of democratic gov- 
ernment to other peoples until as many of our people as of theirs 
are taught to read and write. Whether we can do it or not is a 
very large matter for American statesmen, and an unsettled and 
grave question in educational administration. 

There is still another matter pertinent to our subject, and 
with a reference to that I shall release your patient attention. 
There is a frequently expressed disposition to hold the schools 
responsible for about everything that goes wrong in the country. 
If there is an epidemic of crime, or an outbreak of objectionable 
business methods, or any other distinct evidence of widespread 
moral turpitude, or if all boys and girls are not more completely 
ready for a swifter and more complex life than was ever ex- 
pected in all history before — the schools are taken to task for it. 



38 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

Every step and every influence of the common schools make 
for character. It is true that religious instruction is not very com- 
mon — not as common as it used to be — but it is also true that 
it is as common as denominational opposition will permit. 
There is nothing done that does not contribute to cleanness and 
decency in living, tp exactness and correctness in thinking, and to 
refinement and triteness in feeling. Everything is done in these 
directions up to the very limits of opportunity. 

It is a fundamental policy of this country that political officers 
shall not meddle with denominational instruction, and that 
ecclesiastical officers shall not bend the policies of the state to 
denominational ends. It is not because of any indifference to re- 
ligion, but because of the necessities of the case in a cosmopolitan 
population of freemen and in a state which is opposed to all 
favoritism and stands for equal and exact justice for all. This 
policy leaves religious teaching to the family and to the church, 
unless the universal consent invites the common schools to give it. 
And it seems to me that between the schools, and the churches 
with their auxiliary agencies, and the family life, the children are 
being trained in free religion and sound morals about as well as 
can be expected and quite as well as in any days of yore. In- 
deed, it seems to me that our democratic life and our free and 
rational teaching are developing a people with more of the ele- 
ments of undefined religion and with less of the factors which 
have burdened true religion than has been common in other lands 
and in other days. And in this the common schools are doing 
all that the sound moral purpose of the country will sustain and 
all that the settled political theory of the country will permit. 

But there is a difficulty, extended and discouraging, outside 
of the schools. It operates in spite of the schools. It grows out 
of the American disposition to place freedom above security, to 
protect liberty at all hazards, and take the chances of license and 
its consequences. 

It seems to me that many of the common usages and some of 
the most conspicuous object lessons in the country make for dis- 
honesty rather than integrity. An infinite number of people have 
become what once would have been thought exceedingly rich. 
When one becomes half-way rich he becomes money-mad and re- 
sorts to methods for overreaching all the rest with an ingenuity 
and fiendishness which out-devils the devil himself. There is 
lack of law and lack of prosecutors to stop him, and his success 
in gaining money by immoral methods and in keeping out of 
jail — through the help of astute lawyers and abhorrent forces — 
predisposes too many of the rest to copy his example. Some 
phase of this thing is everywhere in the land and it corrupts the 
life, particularly the young life, of the country. Are the schools 
responsible for that? 



Unsettled Questions of the Schools. 39' 

Again, the railroads are great educators. They educate us 
in much that is good, and also in much that is bad. They train 
us in promptness — and in evasiveness. The laws concerning 
them are not yet very well settled. They observe no moral re- 
straints not fixed by law, and they are past masters in the art of 
changing and evading the laws which they dislike. Men who are 
all that can be desired in their individual characters are often all 
that is undesirable in corporation service. But this is not all, and 
perhaps it is not the worst. They assume that every one else 
will violate or evade the law if he dare. For example, they as- 
sume that everybody will steal from them, and, with something 
of a fellow feeling for those who do, the matter is soon dropped 
when they find it out. They closely inspect and often outrage 
honest people who board their trains. When they find one on 
their trains wrongfully, they put him off and that is the end of it. 
The decent folk resent the shabby treatment and are predisposed 
to retaliate, and the indecent folk get off so easily that they 
are predisposed to try it again. Upon an European railroad 
every one is treated with politeness. It is assumed that one who 
boards a train has the right. If one is found on board without a 
ticket or money he is carried to the next station and put in jail.. 
The road and the public prosecutors make punishment sure and 
severe. The honest people get decent treatment and the dis- 
honest ones get the punishment they deserve. It educates in in- 
tegrity more than we are accustomed to think. It is particularly 
impressive upon the ignorant and upon the young. If, then, 
native honesty, or at least, correct living, is more common among 
the masses of an European than of an American city, are the 
American schools responsible for it? 

Yet again, nothing is a legal crime until a statute makes it so. 
Criminal procedure rests upon legislative acts and not upon the 
common law. The regulation and punishment of crime is far 
from settled. It has not kept pace with the progress of the 
country. It is so dilatory and uncertain as to shame us. Money 
can defer punishment indefinitely except in the most flagrant and 
noted cases — and often, indeed, in those. Public officers charged 
with prosecutions are sometimes found dividing the plunder with 
thieves in consideration of immunity from punishment. The 
thing pervades our affairs broadly and makes a vicious impress 
upon many lives. 

Here is a great matter outside of the schools which is un- 
settled and which will have to be settled. It is wholly unfair to 
charge any lack of moral character or of common honesty which 
may be discerned in the country to the plan and scope of the educa- 
tional system. When the law is perfected and is observed, when 
all may know that it will be speedy and sure and equal in its ap- 
plication to all, the matter of correct living and of moral character 



40 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

in this country seems likely to rest upon as sure a foundation as 
in any other country. The difficulty in this behalf seems to lie 
in the rapid growth in population, in the overwhelming changes in 
manner of life, and in the backwardness of legal and administra- 
tive systems, rather than in fundamental political principles or 
in the plan and scheme of the schools. 

The men and women of the schools are so accustomed to 
settle things that they are rather predisposed to shoulder all the 
burdens that are shied at them and determine all the hard problems 
that come up. The unsettled questions that are legitimately and 
necessarily upon us are many enough and heavy enough. If we 
throw back upon the country the hard nuts which are not ours at 
all, if we resent the constant attempt to use the schools for special 
ends, if we confine them to what they must do to vindicate our 
political and educational theories and justify the money they 
cost, we shall have quite enough to do. But we shall be able to 
do it. As some matters that are outside of the schools approach 
solution, the unsettled questions that are necessarily inside of the 
schools will settle more easily. 

The nation is just beginning to realize that the fundamental 
political principle which holds all men and women equal before 
the law, with the now well developed national policy which pro- 
vides free instruction to the very limits of human knowledge to all 
who will come and take it, involves an expense of unexpected 
magnitude and presents questions of unprecedented difficult}- in 
organization and administration. But there will be no turning 
back. More cheerfully than the people meet any other tax, more 
cheerfully than any other people ever met any tax not vital to the 
national defense and the saving of lives, the American people 
supply and will supply the funds for universal and liberal educa- 
tion. The difficulties will not be met in a year ; they will never 
be settled in a corner. They will be solved by the rational projec- 
tion of the political theories which are the inspiration and the 
guide of the nation's life. They will be met with courage and 
confidence, even with wit and enthusiasm. They will be settled 
through discussion, and yet more through experience. Not all 
that we plan will come to pass. The unexpected will often hap- 
pen, and in time we are likely to see that the unexpected is better 
than the plan we made. The logically progressive purpose of 
our millions of freemen, the gradually unfolding scheme of our 
nation's mission in the world, advancing in accord with a plan 
that is more than human, will overcome difficulties and break out 
the roads for a sane and balanced system of education which will 
give most to the nation through the opportunity it will hold out 
and the encouragement it will give to everv one. 



Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 41 

THE RELATION OE THE PACIFIC COAST TO EDUCA- 
TION IN THE ORIENT. 

By Benjamin Ide Wheeler. 

The ends of the earth at last have met. They have met and 
joined on the American continent midway between the Asiatic 
east and the European west. A place and shelter for the meeting 
has been prepared in the form of a nation blended out of all the 
bloods of mankind, and builded neither on race nor the cults of 
kinship, but on the rights of man. This much human society has 
done, and geography has enforced the work by setting the abode 
of this nation between the two world-seas whose free highways 
make their side of the globe the easier way from the old Occident 
to the old Orient. Four hundred years after the Cabots touched 
the Atlantic hem of North America and one hundred years after 
Lewis and Clark brought the Cabots' work to fulfillment in carry- 
ing the Anglo-Saxon name through to the Pacific hem, in the year 
of our Lord, 15)05, delegates of the greatest European empire 
followed the track of the sun a hundred degrees of longitude 
westward and delegates of the most vigorous Eastern power faced 
the sun and journeyed one hundred and thirty degrees eastward 
until they met in Portsmouth, and if they had reversed the division 
of distance it would have been in Portland — in either case upon 
a continent prepared for them by collusion between the separate 
developments of government and of geography, upon a continent 
which was no other than that unexpected dyke of land which only 
four centuries ago suddenly arose out of the ocean's mist, and 
planted itself upon the map to block Columbus' way, when he 
sought the Orient by reversing the direction of the old-time cara- 
van routes. 

The arteries of empire and commerce in the twentieth cen- 
tury world pulse through the two great oceans. The great powers 
are those that maintain great navies. The ancient world looked 
inward with its back to the oceans and dealt with the land and 
inland seas. Power was quoted in terms of armies, and what 
were called fleets were merely armies fighting from scows in land- 
locked waters. 

The ancient world in its highest organization consisted of two 
mutually exclusive parts, on the one hand Europe with Moham- 
medan Asia and Africa, on the other India and China. Between 
the two there was exchange of goods at arm's length, but no ex- 
change of ideas or institutions. The Occident and the Orient 
dwelt apart and developed as antitheses. They never have under- 
stood each other ; the fundamental concepts of the life-thought 
differ toto coelo. 



42 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

The old Occident, Europe and Mohammedan Asia and Africa, 
was established in a blend of two minor antitheses, Europe and 
the nearer East. The Mediterranean was the mixing pot, Con- 
stantinople was the label and seal. The nearer East had the 
sources of its life in the civilizations of the two great river-valleys 
of the Nile and the Euphrates. Europe assorted its races by 
means of its rivers, pre-eminently the Volga, the Dnieper, the 
Vistula, the Elbe, the Danube, the Rhine, the Seine, the Rhone, 
and the Po ; and by its two southern peninsulas, Greece and Italy, 
inserted the wick into the oil of the greater world civilization. 
Greece discovered the creative freedom of the human mind, and 
established thereon the only human freedom that was ever worth 
the while ; Palestine yielded faith in the goodness and power of the 
single God ; Rome provided for this mind and spirit the body of 
law and government, and out of the trinity arose the Mediter- 
ranean civilization we call European, of which our history, politics, 
art. thought, ethics, religion, in fact, we all of us in all our spiritual 
being and environment are thus far an established part. 

Over against this Mediterranean Occident has stood through 
all the ages unperturbed and impenetrable the incomprehensible 
Orient of India and China. The West could only understand their 
spices ; not their salt. And for the spices and other spicy wares 
the dull camels tramped the Kashgar and the Kabul routes 
through the dark and unrecorded centuries, the only bond be- 
tween the two great world-halves which were and are and mayhap 
always shall be. Ninevah and Trebizond, Babylon, Tyre and 
Sidon were built of the drippings of this inter-world-haff trade : 
then when it diverged through the Red Sea, Alexandria was en- 
riched by it : and later when the Saracens intervened to disturb 
the old routes, Venice and Genoa became its monuments, and 
last of all with the discovery of the route round the Cape of Good 
Hope nations were enriched, first Portugal, then Holland, then 
England. It was not a new continent that Columbus set out to 
discover, but the old spices and gold of the old Orient. The 
finding of America instead was his undoing. 

The yearning of the West has always been toward the East. 
It has sought its wares and spices, but behind all that has lain the 
half-formulated, half-confessed instinct to lay hand on the slum- 
bering power that lurks behind the mystery of the East stored in 
the long-schooled industrial patience of the Chinaman and the 
cosmic philosophy of the Hindoo. The emergence of the Ameri- 
can continent as a mighty barrier across the path of the western 
route became a discouragement to the thought of using that 
route. The search for a passage to the north of North America 
persistently failed. The southern tip of South America pushed 
itself down more than twenty degrees of latitude farther than 
the Cape of Good Hope. Even the narrow isthmus of Panama 



Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 43 

proved a barrier rather than a highway. It took four centuries 
for men to dominate fully the barrier by occupying it with homes 
and cutting it through with steel highways. It will be yet a 
decade or more before the Panama canal is cut through. 

Meantime the outreach toward the Orient has reverted to the 
eastern routes. First came the route round the Cape of Good 
Hope, which created the colonial system of Holland and the em- 
pire of England. Then came the short cut by the Suez Canal 
through the Red Sea. Then came the project of a railway join- 
ing southeastern Europe by way of Asia Minor and Persia to the 
head of the Persian Gulf. Then came the development of Russia's 
trans-Caspian route by steamers across the Caspian and railway 
on through Turkestan by Samarkand. Only the check of English 
power has prevented northern Persia and northern Afghanistan 
from melting into the jurisdiction of Russia and admitting the 
passage of a railway by the old route, Teheran to Herat to Kabul 
to India. So the ways revert to the old-time track of the caravans. 
And finally was built the trans-Siberian line on Russia's own soil 
almost to the shores of the Pacific. Even if northern Manchuria 
could be called Russian soil, it could not yet be granted that a 
railway issuing at Vladivostok had reached the Pacific, for that 
port was closed a third of the year by ice. The day came, how- 
ever, when the watchful eye of England was averted or was closed 
in sleep. Russia displaced England in its place as China's good 
friend and forced it over into an alliance with Japan. Li Hung 
Chang was bought with Russian gold. Russia carried her rail- 
way through to Port Arthur, and at last had found the open sea, 
and enrolled her destiny with the nations which found their em- 
pire in battleships that ply the outer seas. For centuries she had 
struggled to reach an ocean, but the nations plotted to keep her an 
inland power. The Baltic is almost an inland sea : its harbors 
are icebound in the winter, and Scandinavians and Germans con- 
trol its exits. The great powers by a conspiracy of inaction leave 
the stranded hulk of Turkey to block the exit of the Black Sea. 
When Russia has looked for a way out of the Persian Gulf, Eng- 
land has always been ready to set a check, and now the interests 
of Germany, which in recent years has been establishing itself 
as guardian of senile Turkey, will be even more potent to prevent. 
The commercial and perhaps the political interests of Germany 
lead her along the southwestern face of the Russian glacier. Her 
wares move southeast. In this direction, too, is the line of least 
resistance for the development of her political power. The rail- 
way to the head of the Persian Gulf will be hers. It is therefore 
just at present her policy to be the good friend and candid ad- 
viser of Russia, and gather in all the wreckage that issues from 
Russian disaster. 



44 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

When at last in 1898 Russia seemed to have found its clear 
way to the open sea. it appeared that the history of the world had 
advanced into a new stadium. A new power had entered the lists 
for the empire of the outer ocean. Northern and central China were 
to be brought into relations and assimilated to the west through the 
mediation of half-occidental, half-oriental Russia, and oriental 
Japan of occidental veneer was to be robbed of its task, and 
stand doomed to finally inevitable absorption into the mass of 
Russia. Then it was that two events presented the opportunity 
for a total shifting of the horoscope. These two events were 
the Boxer uprising and the Russo-Japanese war. 

The former gave the opportunity for the issuance of John 
Hay's circular note stating the policy of the "open door." The 
circular note was a device forced upon our state department by. 
the classical incompetency of the United States senate under its 
present constitution and its unwritten rules of courtesy. Tt is now 
a body incapable of largeness of views or promptitude of action. 
John Hay seized the opportunity and secured the assent of the 
powers to a policy opposed to partition of China and established, 
especially since the reaffirmation obtained by a second note, this 
policy in a security as firm as any body of international treaties 
could assure. Throughout the Boxer troubles John Hay deftly 
avoided all recognition of the uprising as involving a state of war, 
and thus prevented Russia from obtaining a hold upon Manchuria 
that could arise from conditions of war. Herein lav his most 
certain and distinguished diplomatic service. This was an 
achievement of first importance, shapen in terms of the whole 
world history. Russia had at the beginning assured our gov- 
ernment that it proposed no permanent occupation of Manchuria, 
and was present there only as the owner of a railway anxious only 
to secure peaceful and stable conditions for the operation of its 
property. John Hay took regular occasion to remind the repre- 
sentative of the Russian government at Washington of this as- 
surance, and to impress upon him the fact that our government 
had noted the assurance and accepted it in literal form. 

John Hay appeared upon the scene in this critical juncture, 
because our controversy with Spain had just at that time laid 
responsibilities upon our nation and established its interests in 
Asiatic waters. The juncture was rendered for us peculiarly 
critical by the fact that just at that time England was preoccupied 
in the Boer war, and had suffered notable decline of international 
prestige through the prolongation of that conflict. Whether by 
agreement or otherwise the United States stepped into the ad- 
ministration of what had hitherto been the English policy in the 
Chinese Orient. It was the policy of nonpartition, of having 
China as a whole to work out its own adjustment to world- 
conditions, to administer its own awakening;. 



Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 45 

Close upon this event followed the Russo-Japanese war, the 
Issue of which has certainly been to thrust back Russia from its 
debouchment upon the open ocean, and transform Japan from an 
island power to a power encircling' the Sea of Japan. 

If this issue shall be established as a permanent fact of his- 
tory, the verdict means that this latter day reversion to the cara- 
van routes and the westward track as the means of accomplishing 
the assimilation of the East to the West has met with rebuff, and 
again gone clown in failure. The failure will have been due in 
chief measure to two things ; first, the appearance of America as 
a power in the Pacific ; second, the rise of Japan into the position 
of a modern nation able to assert itself. But it was from America 
Japan received its impulse toward the adoption of the modern 
equipment of life. The occidentalism which has affected it has 
come around the globe westward by the ocean route, not by the 
old eastward route on land. . 

The great problem with which the world-history will have 
to deal in the next centuries concerns the assimilation of eastern 
Asia to the other world-half. All through the long history of 
mankind India and China have gone their own way. They have 
received little or nothing from the thought and experience of the 
rest of the world, and given little to it. Their views of the uni- 
verse and of the purpose and meaning of life are their own. de- 
veloped out of their own experience and reflection without con- 
ference with the West. The man of the West and the man of 
the East can not therefore understand each other. There are no 
common factors in their thought. In superficial things they may 
seem to establish a temporary understanding, but they are apart 
■on the fundamentals. They translate each other's thoughts by 
words that seem to be equivalents, but they are not ; the concepts 
differ. When the Yankee thinks he has caught the secret of the 
Chinaman, then is he of all men most miserable ; his trouble has 
really just begun, for to bis ignorance is added the deceitful as- 
surance of knowledge. To understand the guileless prattle of 
one of these sons of the Celestial kingdom is one thing ; it would 
be quite another to enter the mysterious caverns of a Chinese 
head, dwell in the quirks and convolutions of his brain, and look 
out through his eyes upon the world. Even if you then thought 
vou knew the Chinaman, you surely would not recognize the world 
as being anything you had seen before. 

The human society to which all we occidentals belong is a 
long-time work of history, and highly complicated both as to 
materials and the forms of their blending and use. Every people 
and tribe, everv religion and culture, from Assyria to Ireland, has 
contributed its part. We measure boards by Assyrian inches and 
jokes bv the standards of Irish humor. All the elements of this 
Yast and complicated social mass have become with time and in- 



46 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

tercourse and interchange more or less assimilated to each other. 
An Armenian and a Swede are infinitely nearer to each other 
than either is to a Hindoo or a Chinaman. India and China have 
not yet come into the world's kneading-trough. The time of their 
bringing in cannot, however, be longer delayed. The globe has 
shrunk to one-half in twenty years, and the nooks and" lurking 
places are disappearing, and the barriers of mountain, desert, 
ocean. 

The assimilation of this other world-half, so far as it con- 
cerns fundamental things, — the view-points of the inner religion 
and folk-philosophy, — will be slow, exceeding' slow. The solid 
earth may not have the staying power and patience to wait there- 
for. But in the superficial things of materials, their making, use, 
and interchange, the assimilation will come fast, possibly too fast 
for the safety of the world. If the enormous force of trained 
industrial patience of China shall be on a sudden armed with 
modern steel weapons, i. e., machinery, engines, dynamos, rails, it 
means, of course, for the world an industrial cataclysm, an eco- 
nomic revolution and upturning from the depths. The Chinese 
patience in toil is not a personal acquisition of individuals ; it is 
trained into the bone of the race, and the quality and quantity 
of it combine to give China a latent working force, an industrial 
power far exceeding that of all the nations added together. The 
native steadiness and conservatism of the Chinese must, how- 
ever, give us fair assurance that the industrial transformation will 
come gradually enough for economic conditions at large to adapt 
themselves thereto. 

However this all may be, the main fact which concerns us hi 
connection with the analysis we have been attempting is this : 
the assimilation of the Chinese Orient to the modern world is to 
be through the Pacific Ocean by the westward path of the sun. 
The Pacific was of old a lonesome place where the day could 
change its clothes of number and name without being observed. 
The old world looked inward ; China and India toward their river 
valleys, the occidental half toward the Mediterranean. The mod- 
ern world is the old world turned inside out with outlook toward 
Oceanus that flows around the continents. When America was 
first occupied by colonists the inward-looking people of the old 
world, like the dwellers in an old Roman house built around a 
court with few outside windows, regarded the new continent as 
an outbuilding far back in the back yard. The colonists them- 
selves thought of the Atlantic as something isolating them from 
the Old World, and they claimed it as a wall of separation to free 
them from entanglement in the worn-out policies and systems and 
traditions of Europe, and to give them the thing they called "lib- 
erty !" But now that the world has been turned inside out, the 
Atlantic turns out to be only an estuary of the great ocean, and 



Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 47 

America instead of being' an ontlying continent hidden away under 
the sunset assumes its place in the center of the world, midway 
between the old Occident and the goal of its incessant, age-long 
yearning, the unfathomed East. 

Slowly at first, but steadily throughout, and with cresting 
waves of energy in the last half century, the tide of advancing 
occidentalism has occupied the new continent and finally covered 
with deep flood its western coast. The Pacific Coast has thus 
become within fifty years the outer selvage of occidentalism. Its 
population, too, represents by its aggressive individualism, its 
riskfulness, and its power of creative initiative, the most advanced 
type of the occidental spirit. They are what the old Greeks were 
in the days when Greece was the inner hem of the Occident. 

A century ago when the world still looked inward and Amer- 
ica was a distant annex and the Pacific a desert of waters, the 
eastern shore of our continent formed its front and facade. Now, 
with the world turned inside out, with the Pacific established as 
the world's forum, with the world's contrasted halves arrayed 
on the opposing shores, the front of the continent has shifted to 
the West. For its mission of the future the United States looks 
westward. A recent history of the United States cast in terms 
of geography opens with the statement : "While the development 
of the United States in the first century was clearly determined 
by their position on the Atlantic Coast facing Europe, it is to be 
expected that their history will be henceforward determined by 
their position on the Pacific facing Asia." (Semple.) I think 
this must be the opinion of all who have considered the course of 
human history in the large ; I know it is the decided conviction of 
the historian who lives in the White House at Washington, a 
conviction which has been borne in upon him with a special force 
by the events of the last three months. 

This much by way of introduction, but the whole doctrine of 
my discussion inheres in my introduction. I might, therefore, do 
well to stop at this point, and I am sure you would be quite sat- 
isfied that I should, but there are yet sundry things that I would 
fain say, if only by way of annotation to my introduction. 

The essential spirit of the modern ultra-occidentalism is be- 
traved in its ideals of education, which it derives from the Greeks, 
the ultra-occidentals of antiquity. The nucleoidal idea therein 
concerns a view of the universe wherein thought is the enliven- 
ing force, and the free spirit of thinking, planning, willing man 
the real creative source. Science is the order that human mind 
injects into the haphazard and waste of savagery and nature after 
abstracting from them their thoughtless laws by observation. The 
purpose of education is the ennobling and fulfillment of manhood 
to its liberation from circumstance, impulse, prejudice, supersti- 
tion, the rule-of-tnumb, and all things that mean slavery to the 



48 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

instant vision and thoughtless force. The aim of education is to 
develop to the full all the native capacities of the individual, so 
that he may live abundantly and be a freeman, a freeman in the 
face of unthinking" nature by dominating" it, in the face of his 
human environment by judging it correctly and dealing with it 
justly, in the face of his own self by controlling it. The theory 
of the whole Chinese system of education, whether in manners, 
crafts, or letters, involves the effort to fit and constrain the in- 
dividual into conformity with his environment, so that he may 
perform the tasks that are awaiting him and live the life his an- 
cestors have prepared for him, with the maximum of adjustment 
and the minimum of friction. For discovery, invention, innova- 
tion, creation, there is no provision, except prevention. It ap- 
proaches what is viciously called in this country "practical edu- 
cation." the education that assumes to give skill and the knowl- 
edge of recipes without that control of the sources and bearings 
of the matter which enable mind to do its creative work of adapt- 
ing" means to new ends, meeting new emergencies, and making a 
man a freeman, the master of his job and not its slave. While the 
Chinese education seeks to shape the individual to his environ- 
ment, the American training in its best form seeks to give the 
individual power within himself, i. e., to make him powerful in 
himself to shape and create his environment. To the American, 
life is real ; to the Chinaman, it is a drama set upon a stage. The 
business of the individual is to take the part and play the role 
assigned to him in the drama. To live well in the Chinese sense 
is to live in "good form," to "keep face." This is the antithesis 
both in view of life and theory of education which we are called 
upon to bridge. 

Within the next decades the educational institutions of the 
Pacific Coast in first line of those of America will surelj be 
called upon, to an extent out of all proportion to anything in the 
past, to render service in opening Western education to the people 
of the ( )rient. As it always has been in the history of human 
education, betterments and reforms will proceed from the top 
downward. The universities will lay the foundations. It will be 
the Chinamen trained in the best our universities can give who will 
begin the reorganization of their home education and train the 
teachers for the common schools. A recent Chinese graduate of 
the University of California has already been put at the head of 
the educational system of a Chinese province, and is just now 
busied with the difficult task of founding embryonic normal 
schools for the training of the first teachers who are to infuse 
Western learning into the heads and lives of Chinese boys. 
Within the three past years, aside from the Chinese coming to the 
university of their own responsibility, a considerable number have 
been sent by one or another of the provincial" governments to be 



Relation of Pacific Coast to Education in Orient. 



49 



trained for the government service, some in law, some m political 
science, some in education, some in engineering, some in com- 
merce and some in finance. There are no better students today 
in the university. If we can teach them initiative and sense ot 
control and the modern sciences whose development rests upon 
these qualities of mind, yet we can learn from them, as our civili- 
zation can learn from its Eastern antipode a patient recognition 
of the power of time and of the force residing in the inertia of 
great social masses and the value of persistent aclherence to the 
obligations of duty and loyal service to the inherited order of the 
faSv and society. A man is of small use to his day and genera- 
tion, be he Chinaman or American who absolve* himself as her- 
mit tramp, and bandit, from all relation or obligation to the hfe- 
ne of descent and posterity as established m the laws and respon- 
sibilities of the fireside, the homestead, and the home community 
An entirely different problem confronts us regarding the 
Filipino people who have fallen under our oversight in the order 
of events. They came to our hands because we had a Paafic 
Coast. Dewey entered Manila Bay because a Spanish fleet 1> mg 
there was a menace to the harbors of our coast. The 'est to- 
owed inevitably. What we have done as a nation for these peo- 
ple is worthy of the best interpretation of our democracy. We 
ave done what no nation has done for a colony of alien race. 
We have sought to give them through education the power of self- 
determination. They differ from all other Oriental peoples in 
that 1 hev have enjoyed the advantage of centuries under Christian 
flue ce. These centuries have not been in vain in bringing them 
nearer toward an assimilation into Western civilization. While 
laTku o- the Chinese stability, they are bright and versatile, and the 
best of their youth will respond readily to the opportunities of 
our higher education and develop into leaders of their people. 
What is needed by their people is leaders ™™™™* c ^™>™t 
icine engineering and agriculture— not politicians. Already in 
considerable numbers Filipino boys are coming to our universities 
and schools, and the immediate future will make large demands 
uoon the institutions of the coast for their care. 

Our nation was shapen for the work of evangelization. It 
has gatherea into it all the bloods and faiths of the occidental 
world and has moulded them together into a people out of which 
s en er4 g the concept man. It has based its institutions upon 
dem^cra C y g the most daring optimism devised by man, a system 
of^overning whose chief raison d'etre lies in its power to edu- 
cate and uplift men by conferring responsibility and saying to 
them The law and the kingdom, lo, they are within you. The 
fait 'of our fathers is our faith today ; our evangelizing zeal is 
he zeal of democracv,-the ultimate zeal of the West,-to make 
men self-determining and self-governing. Is democracy a fail- 



50 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

ure ? Our answer is the answer of John Paul Jones to the question 
of the Serapis, "Have you surrendered?" "We have not yet be- 
gun to fight." 



EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY. 

By F. Louis Soldan. 

The Nature of Democracy. 

Man's culture has been of long development, beginning in 
ages of which history has no record. Some of the achievements 
of civilization have been by design and through the work of in- 
dividuals. Art and literature embody, in the first place, the 
genius of the artist. . Other achievements of civilization have 
grown from within the race itself and have come into existence 
through the instinctive action of the masses who are not always 
conscious of the spirit that impels them. 

The great institutions which hold society together, family, 
state, and church, embody the experience and wisdom of the race. 
No one human mind has planned them. They have been slowly 
evolved and created by mankind. They make possible peace on 
earth, order, happiness, and the achievement of all things great and 
valuable in human life. The culmination of the political evolu- 
tion of the race is found in the democracy of modern times. The 
democracies of ancient Rome or Greece were early phases in this 
evolution, but they were deficient in important respects. A rul- 
ing class had taken the place of the king, and there were bodies 
of men in those republics which were disfranchised. Both 
ancient and modern democracy place the public good above every 
other consideration, but while ancient democracy defined the 
public good as the honor and power of the state, modern democ- 
racy understands by it the general welfare of the masses. Its 
belief and tenet is the equal rights of all men. Modern democracy 
is the most perfect application of the idea of Christianity to the 
conduct of the state. Democratic institutions are ultimately 
based on the brotherhood of man and of man's duty to his 
neighbor. 

Modern democracy is altruism. It recognizes that the wel- 
fare of each individual is bound up with, and dependent on, the 
welfare of all others. In a democracy, everv man feels that in 
defending and protecting the rights of the lowliest and weakest 
he defends and protects his own. Modern democracy is more 
than a political institution ; it is a confession of faith. ' For this 
reason the history of our nation is not of local interest only but 
concerns the whole world. Our country has made the idea of 



Education in a Democracy. 51 

democracy once more respected in the world, after the first French 
republic ended in failure and disenchantment. The modest yet 
bold experiment of our forefathers to found a government on 
the equal rights of manhood, with its purpose of securing to each 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has grown to be an 
example and a peaceful challenge to the peoples of the world. 
It has re-established the faith in the possibility of a government 
by the people and for the people. In maintaining her democracy, 
and developing through it, resources, power, and culture, which 
could have resulted in no such measure under any other form of 
government, Columbia holds up the torch of enlightenment to 
the European world. 

The arrival of the democracy among the nations of the earth 
means a turning point in the history of the world. Our un- 
paralleled growth in population, the immense development of 
our resources and wealth, make us easily the most powerful nation 
on earth, and all this influence is thrown silently in the scale of 
popular liberty and democracy. The first Napoleon, who had felt 
the fatal grip of autocratic ' Russia, said: "A hundred years 
hence, Europe will be Kossack or republican." The arrival of 
the United States among the nations has made the cause of 
liberty impregnable. With our active faith in democracy, we do 
not ignore the many and grave imperfections that cling to our 
democratic institutions, especially in the government of cities. 
Democracy is an evolution, which means, I take it, that there is 
a constant elimination of worthless and decaying features and a 
strong current of inner life toward the creation and survival of 
what is fittest to endure. The poison that has found its way 
into our communal life will be ejected and overcome through 
the vigor of our national system and the wisdom and character 
of our citizens. 

Among the social agencies on which democracy depends 
for its existence and growth, education ranks first. The family, 
the church, the school, and the newspaper, have a share in furnish- 
ing the educational conditions which democracy needs for its 
life and growth. 

The Individual in a Democracy. 
The reason usually given for the demand that education 
should receive the greatest care in a democracy is that he who 
governs a land should be a wise man, and that since each voter 
helps to govern the country, he should be as well educated as 
the sovereign of a monarchy. As a matter of fact, the voter is 
not called upon to map out the policies of government. The 
matters which he is to decide are mapped out for him by the 
great political parties which contend. But while the customary 
argument has a somewhat exaggerated form, it expresses never- 
theless an undeniable truth. The citizen of a democracy governs 



52 Lewis and Clark Educational Co 



tigress. 



and is governed at the same time. He helps with his vote to 
determine issues and to elect magistrates, and he is in turn «ov- 
. erned by the vote of his fellow citizens and by the magistrate 
ot their choice. The individual may never be destined to be- 
come a leader, but intelligence is as necessary to those that follow 
teadership in political matters as it is to the leaders themselves 
livery citizen in a democracy should acquire through education 
the ability to understand issues and to choose and accept leader- 
ship, ihe soldier needs intelligence as much as the captain 
ihe dangerous leader in politics is .possible only through the 
ignorance of his followers. Moreover, the general intelligence 
of the people exerts its power constantly in producing, modifying 
and directing that mysterious and potent factor in the life of 
democracy which is called public opinion and which is nothing 
but the cumulative wisdom and the ethical force of the masses 
Public opinion is the resultant of many minds and many opinions' 
each exerting pressure in .accordance with its individual force' 
character, and life position. Public opinion thus created moves 
the affairs of the nation, as the joint action of current, wind oar 
and rudder moves the boat across the river in the line of the re- 
sultant ot these forces. 

The Public School Idea. 
With the self-evident necessity of general education as the 
basis of democracy it is remarkable that the idea of the public 
school has but slowly found its way into the history of our in- 
stitutions. A hundred years ago there was no system of public 
education in the United States. There were schools maintained 
by parents, by school associations, and some public schools sup- 
ported by states and municipalities, but there was no system of 
public education. A beginning had been made in colonial times 
borne of the colonies, especially those of New England, saw the 
necessity of public education from the beginning. In other 
colonies however, education received little attention. Some of 
the royal governors were opposed to it. The extreme views of 
Governor Berkeley of Virginia. 1641, have often been quoted 
Berkeley was an educated man, a graduate of Oxford, and oug-ht 
to have appreciated the general value of education. He said- 
1 thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses' and 
I hope we shal not have them these hundred years" for learning 
has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the wo Icf 
and printing has divulged then, and libels against the best of 
governments. God keep us from both." 

Nor was the view that it was dangerous to educate the 
masses confined to the southern colonies. It may be traced in 
the definition of purposes for which King's College th e n edeLs 
sor of the splendid and liberal Columbia Collegf of New York 
was established; namely, to educate voting men of noble birth' 



Education in a Democracy. 53 

and to counteract and resist the spread of republican ideas. The 
Dutch had established free public schools in their American pos- 
sessions during the seventeenth century, but when the English 
wrested the colony from Holland, these schools were stamped out 
and nothing was done to replace them. The subject of public 
schools was one of the causes of constant contention between the 
Dutch communities and the English governors. Even in the 
New England colonies the principle that public schools are a 
necessity for the state and hence must be supported by every tax- 
payer, whether he has children of his own or not, was but slowly 
evolved. 

In a general way the steps in the evolution of the idea of 
public schools conducted by the state may be summarized as 
having passed through the phases of, first, encouraging schools 
and allowing, not prescribing, contributions from public funds ; 
second, the obligatory support of public schools from the public 
funds ; third, making the public schools the common schools for 
the people. 

The first attitude of those colonies in which educational 
sentiment existed at an early time was to encourage and prescribe 
education — but there was no provision, as a general rule, that 
the state must supply such education free. It was encouraged or 
prescribed by the state, but the parents were supposed to pay 
for it. 

An early law of the general court of Massachusetts directed 
that the selectmen of every town should prosecute those parents 
who refused "to train their children in learning and labor," and 
a fine was fixed for those who did not teach them "so much learn- 
ing as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue." 
While education was thus made compulsory, the burden of pro- 
viding the means for it was usually put on the parent. The act 
just quoted contains evidence of the consequences which result 
from making the parent bear the expense of the maintenance 
of schools. The poor, the shiftless, and the stingy parent would 
rather not send his child to be instructed than contribute to the 
support of the school. 

The step from the encouragement of public schools to that 
of having the state provide for such schools was but slowly taken. 
The most famous school law of colonial times, the act passed by 
the Massachusetts General Court in 1647, while taking the posi- 
tion that the child must receive an education at all hazards, im- 
poses the duty of paying for the schooling on the parent in the 
first place, and only in the second place on the state. The act 
reads, in part, as follows : "To the end that learning may not be 
buried in the graves of our forefathers :;: ::: * it is ordered 
that every township within this jurisdiction * * * of the 
number of fifty households shall appoint one within their town to 



54 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, 
whose wages shall be paid either by the parents * * * of 
such children, or by the inhabitants in general." This document 
is thoroughly consistent. When the maintenance of public schools 
is defended for the reason that learning should not die out, there 
is no defense for burdening the state with the cost. Provision 
for public education at public expense becomes justifiable only 
where its necessity for the very existence of the state is recog- 
nized. During the eighteenth century the public school idea made 
but slow progress. It was only after our independence had been 
achieved that public sentiment in regard to education broadened. 
The act of 1787 which created the Northwestern Territory gave a 
large part of the public domain to education. The changed atti- 
tude concerning the relation between the state and education is 
best shown by comparing the act just quoted with the famous 
utterance of the great statesman of the age. Daniel Webster said 
in 1821 : "For the purpose of instruction we hold every man 
subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not 
to the question whether he himself have or have not children to 
be benefited by the education for which he pays ; we regard it as a 
wise and liberal system of police by which property and life and 
the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent in some 
measure the extension of the penal code by inspiring a salutary 
and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early 
age * * *. We confidently trust * * * that by the diffu- 
sion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments the 
political fabric may be secure as well against open violence as 
against the slow but sure undermining of licentiousness." 

The obligation of the state to provide free education has been 
practically settled by public opinion, but the question remains a 
matter of theoretical discussion to this day. In one of the last of 
his essays, Herbert Spencer, the most influential philosopher of 
England, denied that the state had any right to compel him to 
pay for the schooling of his neighbor's children. 

Even at present the question about the rightful extent of 
public education is sometimes raised. There are still those who 
think that the state should not provide an education that goes 
beyond the three R's. They may possibly believe in public ele- 
mentary schools, and may not object to state universities, but they 
are opposed to the maintenance of free high schools. The answer 
which the practice of the modern state gives to these theorists is, 
to use the language of the English scientists, that it erects a lad- 
der from the gutter to the university by which the poorest child 
may rise to the highest educational plane. The attitude of the 
people of the United States, and the faith that they entertain that 
public education is the basis of democracy and the condition of its 
stability is shown by the enormous sacrifices which our people 



Education in a Democracy. 55 

through congress and legislature have brought for the cause of 
education. While the general government, as a rule, does not 
support schools directly, its gifts to the cause of education in 
grants of the public domain alone amount to eighty-six million 
acres, or an area equal to that covered by the New England states 
and the states of New York, Maryland, and Delaware. It is equal 
to more than two-thirds of the entire territory of the Republic of 
France. The amount spent in the* United States for teachers' sal- 
aries alone amounts to more than one hundred million dollars per 
year. The people could not attest their faith in the supreme value 
of education in democracy in a more emphatic way than by the 
support they give to the schools. 

The conviction of the importance of public schools for the life 
of the state, deep seated as it seems to us at present, has been of 
gradual growth. While the newer state constitutions invariably 
provide for education, the older state constitutions contained no 
such provision. 

The Common School. 

The public school as established in the first half of the last cen- 
tury did not immediately become the "common" school for every 
rank and class of the people. There were sections in the country 
in which it was looked upon as a school for everybody, as an in- 
stitution to which the poor could send their children without 
pay. Although this idea is becoming obsolete, it still lingers in 
the minds of some. I remember a conversation with an educated 
and somewhat aristocratic gentleman of commercial prominence 
who commended the improvements effected in high schools and 
incidentally said that he sent his children to some private school. 
He remarked : "I put my children in a private school because it 
seems to me to be wrong for a man to get an education for his 
children for nothing, when he is able to pay for it." 

The public school has noc only the task of disseminating 
intelligence, but also the further function of building up the na- 
tion by spiritually assimilating the people. In the common school, 
the children of all social ranks, of all religious creeds, meet and 
come in sympathetic touch. Different views and different ranks 
are taught to live in peace with each other. 

A democracy like ours does not aim at leveling differences. 
There is room in it for wealth and poverty, and for every creed 
and every view. Democracy respects individuality which grows 
and thrives nowhere better than in the sunshine of liberty. But 
while recognizing fully the legitimate differences which a large 
nation with its complex economic life, its social and sectional con- 
ditions, involves, it does not consider it desirable that the classes 
and social ranks should get out of touch and sympathy with each 
other. If the children of the nation are reared in common schools 



56 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

attended by the poor and the rich, by all creeds and all nationali- 
ties, public education not only secures the permanency of free in- 
stitutions, but establishes cohesive bonds of sympathy and good 
will among all our people. The public school by becoming also the 
common school, is welding the whole nation into intimate spiritual 
solidarity and companionship. It prevents democracy from be- 
coming a house divided against itself. In our large cities, the 
work of the common schools has been attended by startling re- 
sults. In the city of New York, for instance, all the nationalities 
of the globe are represented, some'of them forming colonies equal 
in number to a large city. The heterogeneity of language, of 
creeds, of social habits, is marked and permanent. Yet the chil- 
dren of these immigrants that enter the school ignorant of its lan- 
guage even, leave it at the end of a few years, devoted to our 
institutions and in touch with American life. 

Not only to the immigrant, but to our own people, the com- 
mon school is a boon and a blessing. The meeting of all classes, 
of our children in common work is in itself of educational value 
and significance. They learn to appreciate the human qualities in 
their fellow-beings regardless of social distinctions. The end of 
school days brings with it a parting of ways, but a bond of fellow- 
ship has been established through common schooling which softens 
the harshness of the demarcation lines of life. Education in a 
democracy requires common schools for the people. The distinc- 
tion between the idea of the public school and that of the common 
school will appear perhaps more clearly by reference to the pub- 
lic schools in German cities. An excellent system of instruction is 
found there, and the schools are public to the extent that they are 
supported and maintained by the state and municipality. P.ut they 
are not common schools. 

There are in each city public schools of various grades with 
courses of study that differ in regard to advancement and the 
kind of studies taught. There are schools in which foreign lan- 
guages are part of the curriculum, and others in which the boys 
begin the study of the classics when they have reached their tenth 
year. In other schools, again, the course is simple and does not go 
beyond what we include in the ordinary elementary curriculum. 
The various public schools of the German city differ among them- 
selves in kind, and the parent must decide what sort of education 
his child is to obtain and select some school to fit his idea. In 
each of the city schools of advanced standing a tuition fee is 
charged, and as a consequence the selection depends on the 
wealth and standing of the family. Those boys that are to have 
a college education at a later time are trained in separate schools. 

This brief explanation will show that while these institutions 
are public schools, they are not common schools in the sense of 



Education in a Democracy. 57 

'our definition. The classes and social ranks separate at an early 
time, and public instruction becomes, in a sense, class education. 

The state has created the public school ; in making the public 
school also the common school, the teacher has largely co-operated, 
because the question of where the parent sends his children is 
largely determined by the convenience of the buildings and excel- 
lence of the instruction. The way to make the public schools the 
common schools was to make them uncommonly good, and in im- 
proving the schools and in winning for them the appreciation of 
the people, the teacher has had a large share. 

It is of the highest importance for our democratic institu- 
tions, which require mutual good will and the sympathetic touch 
of the masses, that there should be common schools. 

School Instruction in a Democracy. 

The question arises as to whether the instruction in the com- 
mon schools of a democracy should be or can be adjusted so as to 
serve specifically the purposes for which the schools are main- 
tained. At a first glance, it might very properly be said that in- 
struction is subject to pedagogical considerations only and cannot 
be modified to serve political ends. 

There is no democratic road to arithmetic. Geography, pen- 
manship, and the study of science, are the same, no matter under 
which form of government they are taught. Moreover, the best 
way to educate good citizens is to train good men and women. 

Yet, while instruction in the schools of a democracy must 
comply with the general method which rational teaching follows 
everywhere, it is nevertheless true that in some respects it may be 
adjusted to the great purposes of the state. If democracy de- 
pends on the dissemination of intelligence, if it is desirable that the 
citizen, when new issues arise, should be able to inform himself 
through the printed channels of information, there is no study in 
the school that is of greater importance than reading. If the 
schools did nothing else than to impart to the child the ability to 
read with ease they would thereby render good service to the state. 
The ability to read makes his mind accessible to the influence of 
the thinkers and writers of the day. The newspaper can talk to 
him every day. The library is open to him. He becomes inter- 
ested in the issues which he must help to decide, and his judgment 
is enlightened. 

The ability to read is not identical with the possession of in- 
telligence. There have been very intellignt persons who were 
unable to read. The ability to read does not in itself make the 
thoughtful citizen, but the ability to grasp and assimilate the sub- 
ject-matter of the printed page ranks among the best training 
which intelligence can receive. It is the task of the school to pay 
special attention not only to the mechanism of reading, the cor- 



58 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

rect and fluent pronunciation of the words, but to form, from the 
very beginning, the habit of thoughtful reading. There is no bet- 
ter training of the child's intelligence than the constant practice of 
questioning a class on the lesson the}' have read. The questions 
should not only serve the important purpose of enriching the 
child's vocabulary by making the language of the lesson his own 
by his use of the words of the book, but for the still more import- 
ant purpose of leading the children to draw inferences and to ex- 
ercise their judgment. Instruction in reading, besides cultivating 
intelligence, should engender a love of reading. Inclination to 
read and enjoyment of reading should become qualities of the 
child's soul. The love of good books should be the treasure which 
he carries with him from school when he enters life. 

During the last two decades important service has been done 
to education by connecting the work of the public library with the 
school and inculcating habits of serious and thoughtful reading. 
The child learns how to obtain books, an art which is useful to the 
grown man. Reading the newspapers is of importance, but it 
should be supplemented among intelligent people by the reading of 
books. Man's education extends from the cradle to the grave. 
First, the family takes hold of him. Xext, the school supple- 
ments the family. When school ends the forceful education of life 
begins. The newspaper becomes a potent daily influence which 
extends beyond the political guidance and instruction which it 
gives to the reader. The newspaper, besides discussing politics, 
relates to us every morning the events in the social life of the com- 
munity and the country. It helps to bring the people of all classes 
into that touch with each other, which is so important in a democ- 
racy, where the interests of one are the interests of all. Even 
this semi-gossiping part of the daily paper has an altruistic ten- 
dency which gives to each reader a glimpse at the world at large 
and an interest in the life of others. 

The subject matter of the reading lessons in the public schools 
affords many opportunities to hold up civic virtues and noble 
human qualities before the young minds, to fill them with admira- 
tion for the great men of the nation and to lead them earlv to an 
appreciation of our institutions. Selections in the reading books 
that are capable of teaching civic duties or of rousing patriotic 
sentiments should be utilized with special educational skill. It 
used to be the practice to defer instruction in history until the 
child reached the highest grades of the elementary course. The 
fact that a large percentage of children leave the school before 
they reach those grades, entails that they never receive instruc- 
tion in the history of their country. This is a bad practice. 
While formal instruction in history may not be possible in the 
primary grades, it is quite feasible to teach the elements of history 
through the biography of some of our national heroes. More- 



Education in a Democracy. 59 

over, there are easy historical stories written for little children, 
which should be vised for supplementary reading. No matter how 
early children are compelled to leave school, they should have 
some knowledge of the history of their country. 

In the highest grades, the constitution of the United States is 
studied. It used to be the practice, and in some places it is the 
practice still, to commit it verbatim, and in answer to the teacher's 
questions to recite its sections from memory. Fortunately this 
practice has been superseded by a better method. It laid stress 
on the words sometimes to the neglect of the meaning. There is 
no better opportunity to give to the young minds a glimpse at the 
wonderful structure of our political organization than to grasp 
the meaning and thought rather than the words. It is of course 
easier to lead children to repeat the words of the constitution 
than to make them understand the meaning of its leading features, 
but the latter is the worthier method in the schools of a de- 
mocracy. 

Recitations. 

Aside from the influence which special studies have, the 
general form of the school work may be made to promote the 
ability to obtain information by one's own efforts. The school 
may be so organized as to impart skill in the use of sources of 
information and to cultivate a certain independence of thought. 
In European countries and in Eastern cities the whole room as a 
rule forms one class and recites together. Much can be said in 
favor of the other plan, of having two classes in each room. This 
arrangement of the program prevails in many cities of the West. 
Where the whole class recites together it is constantly dominated 
by the personality of the teacher. The pupil is not left to himself 
sufficiently long ; he is not made habitually to depend on his own 
resources. Where there are two classes in each room, one class 
studies its lesson while the other recites. The pupil has a chance 
to do something by himself. He is left to his own initiative. He 
is freed for a half hour from the intellectual control by which his 
mind is made to keep step with others. For a time he sets his 
own pace, and thinks his own thoughts. He learns how to ob- 
tain through thoughtful reading information of which he must 
give an account later when he recites. He is placed in the same 
position in which he will find himself in later years when he tries 
to obtain information from books. His school experience trains 
him for life. 

The recitation of the lesson itself gives important training. 
Each child is in intellectual touch with his class and joins them 
in common work. He learns to listen to the reasoning of others, 
to reason himself, and to present his reasons intelligently. I be- 
lieve that American schools give greater scope to connected topical 



60 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

recitation than is given elsewhere, and that the readiness of the 
average American to speak in the meetings which he is called on to 
attend is a direct result of this training. 

All instruction should tend to develop individuality, but it is 
an error — frequently met, even among teachers — to suppose that 
when children are instructed in classes, individuality is lost 
thereby. Many believe, erroneously, that it would be better to 
instruct children singly if time allowed, and that instruction by 
classes is but a makeshift resorted to because the other way is too 
expensive. Just the opposite is true. There is no way of de- 
veloping character and individuality except by touch and contact 
and intercourse with our fellow beings. Intellectual or artistic 
talent, says the poet, may develop in solitude, but character and 
individuality grow only in the stress and struggle of life. Just 
because the child meets his equals in the school and works and 
competes with them will his individual traits unfold and become 
refined and ennobled. Selfishness is suppressed and altruistic 
motives are cultivated. Teaching children in classes develops 
individuality. Let us discard the pernicious idea that teaching is 
a pouring-in process, and consists of nothing but the storing of 
the mind with information which the teacher presents and the 
pupil remembers. In instruction it is not the teacher's activity, 
but the activity which he causes in the pupil that counts. The 
response alone which the child makes to instruction is of value. 
Education depends on what the child does with the instruction 
that is presented, the trains of tin night that it engenders in him, 
how he interprets and assimilates new information, how he is able 
to express it and what he will do with if in life. The highest 
pedagogical skill is displayed not in the more or less brilliant wax- 
in which the teacher presents knowledge, but the response' on the 
part of the children which she is able to bring about. The child's 
response to instruction, however, depends on the individuality 
of the child himself. There are not two in a class that study a 
lesson alike, to whom it means the same thing, or who recite it the 
same way. 

Individuality is irrepressible. It will be promoted stronglv 
by class recitation if the teacher gives enough freedom and elbow- 
room to the mental activity of the child and judges a recitation 
or an answer, not from the standpoint that it must conform with 
the answer she herself has in mind. The teacher must enter into 
the child's own way of thinking. 

Discipline. 

The discipline of the school if rightly conducted imparts civic 
training. Valuable civic habits may be inculcated and strength- 
ened, such as the habit of obedience to law, the habit of self- 
government, the habit of self-regulated, orderlv conduct, of re- 



Education in a Democracy. 61 

spect for the rights of others and of good will. These are of 
general human as well as of civic importance. When the little 
child enters the kindergarten he learns his first important civic 
lesson. At home his position was unique, for the youngest child 
is the royal person round whom the love and attention of the 
whole family center and whose wish is law. When thrown into 
touch with other children in the kindergarten he learns verv soon 
that his will is not supreme since he lives in a little community 
where others have equal rights with him. 

In the primary grades the child must learn to respect thor- 
oughly the teacher's authority,' hecause it is essential that 
habits of order be formed. The little child must learn to do what 
he is told without an obligator}- lengthy explanation of the "why" 
and "wherefore" of the order. Obedience to law can not be made 
to depend on each individual's approval of it. But gradually, 
when the habit of obedience has been acquired, the teacher's au- 
thority must be made to appear as the power which carries out 
the law of the school and the generally recognized rules and 
usages of proper conduct. When the child has arrived at the 
age when he can understand the reason for the habits of order 
which he has formed, constant appeals may then be made to the 
child's good sense and the discipline of authority changes into the 
rule of law. The little misdemeanors of learning childhood are 
then treated not as offenses against the authority of the teacher, 
but as encroachments on the rights of the other children. Whisper- 
ing is improper, not because the teacher has prohibited it, but 
because the other children have a right to be free from unneces- 
sary and willful disturbance while they are at work. 

The wise teacher will remember that too much government 
is as bad in school as it is in the state. Lack of discipline and 
order in a school room is bad, but too much discipline is worse. 
An air of individuality, of rational freedom, ought to prevail in a 
well-managed room, and there is nothing more charming for an 
educator than to visit a room which seems to run itself, where 
good order and intentness upon the work prevail, all seemingly 
due to the earnestness of the pupils, without any apparent effort 
on the part of the teacher. All glory to such teacher ; it is all her 
work any way ; it is the response which her character, her good 
judgment, her incessant labor has brought about, which alone 
counts in education. The air of that freedom which fills the land 
and in which the children must live their lives must permeate 
the school room as well. 



I 

62 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

SCHOOL EXTENSION AND ADULT EDUCATION. 
By Henry M. Leipziger. 

There is one creed to which we all subscribe, and that is our 
belief in the necessity and importance of education for all. Not 
only republican America, but monarchical Europe recognizes the 
power of public opinion, and this deference to public opinion is 
the triumph of democracy. How important is it then that public 
opinion be sound and sane and that the democracy that exer- 
cises this power should wield' it in obedience to lofty and pure 
motives ! 

The most potent agent in the spread of education among the 
people is that nineteenth century product, the public school ; and 
in the brief time that I shall occupy, I shall speak specifically of 
the marvelous extension in the conception of the school that has 
taken place during the last generation, and in making references, 
shall necessarily be confined to what has gone on in New York. 
Many other cities have special advantages or have made special 
school experiments which have been more or less successful ; but 
it is my desire to call the attention of this audience to what has 
gone on in school extension in New York City and to indicate 
the path along which all cities should go to make their schools 
the most perfect citizen-creators possible. 

Fully to appreciate the problem, it may be well to call your 
attention to the fact that the City of New York has on its rolls 
to-day, in round numbers, about 600,000 pupils ; that it has a 
staff of about 13,000 teachers ; that the school population repre- 
sents all the diverse elements that form our heterogeneous city ; 
that in some portions of this city the population is so dense that 
practically children may grow up therein with but a limited knowl- 
edge of nature : and that the task of educating this vast con- 
glomeration presents a social problem with which no other city 
of the world has .to contend. And, while the solution of this 
problem is far from being attained, it is well to observe that the 
spirit and the desire are present gradually to give New York the 
best that can be given. 

The extension of the school has gone along three main lines. 
The school curriculum has been broadened. Thirty years ago, 
what are known as the staples of education, the three R's, formed 
the main themes of instruction. Rote learning was the custom — 
repetition of facts learned from books seemed to be the "be all'' 
of education. The hand and the eye were little used as means 
of educational power. The late General Francis A. Walker, 
head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in describing 
the school of his youth, says : "I entered the schools of Massa- 
chusetts at five vears of age and left them to go to college at 



School Extension and Adult Education. 63 

fifteen. In all the interval, I do not remember ever to have been 
set to any study or exercise which I could not have done just as 
well if born without hands, except solely for the convenience 
of holding a book and turning over its leaves, or of writing on 
paper, slate or blackboard ; or which I could not have done just as 
well if afflicted with total blindness." 

How different in the school curriculum of to-day, when the 
theory is being put into practice that "the whole boy must go to 
school," and that the hand and the eye and the heart and the 
head must be trained ! Therefore, in the modern school cur- 
riculum, there is included provision for the means of acquiring 
knowledge and expressing it ; provision for the study of nature 
and of history and of literature ; provision to give the child the 
use of his hands ; and provision, I am glad to say, for physical 
development. It seems as if the wise ideal of the present school 
curriculum is to prepare the children who attend school "for 
life — not merely for examinations" ; and that the educational sys- 
tem at any time in vogue must adapt itself constantly to the social 
and industrial conditions of the time or of the place. In every 
city, while it is desirable that there should be uniformity in studies 
so as to secure for every child the just minimum to which he or 
she is entitled in order to become an upright and an honorable 
citizen, yet opportunity should constantly be afforded for adjust- 
ment to conditions which may prevail in different sections of the 
citv, so that the needs of anv particular locality may be provided 
for. 

The extension as indicated in the curriculum is further shown 
by the character of the schools which now form a part of the 
great educational system of our metropolis. Eight years ago, 
there were no high schools in New York City. The city has 
maintained a college, formerly known as the Free Academy, 
since 1853, and now as the College of the City of New York, and 
is erecting new buildings for this college at a cost of about $5,000,- 
000 ; and a Normal College for the training of teachers since 
about 1870 ; but there were no high schools until eight years ago. 
There are now about twenty-one, including branches, and these 
include two commercial and four manual training high schools, 
one of which is for girls. It is certainly gratifying to note the 
recognition of manual training. Too much appreciation can not 
be given to the value of manual training as a moral agent as well 
as an educational factor ; and if in a course of education the 
studies engaged in by the pupils, besides their educational value, 
have a relationship to home or to life, then so much more valuable 
are those subjects. Instruction in art, which is becoming more 
and more general, and instruction in domestic science, in a city 
so large a population of which lives in the tenement, constitute 
one of the most valuable features of the extension of school life. 



64 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

As an indication of the appreciation of the fact that the high 
schools have met a common demand, is the fact that there are 
about 18,000 pupils in these high schools, and the majority of the 
scholars in these schools are girls. It is well to refer here also 
to the avidity with which young women of our city avail them- 
selves of the opportunities of education. It is indeed true that 
the privilege of education is one which should be afforded equally 
to man and to woman. It is not always, however, that the privi- 
lege of education has been recognized as a right for women. 

In the good old New England days, in the Hopkins Grammar 
School in New Haven, there was a rule that "all girls should be 
excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar 
school." When, in 1?<><>, the town of Medford did grant the 
privilege, how did it do it? It voted that the committee have 
power to agree with the schoolmaster to instruct girls two hours 
a day after the boys are dismissed. In 1790 this resolution was 
passed in Gloucester, Mass. : "That the school shall be open 
eight hours daily, and that two hours daily shall be devoted to 
the instruction of females, as they are a tender and interesting 
branch of the community, but have been much neglected in the 
public school in this town." 

The errors of the past are rapidly being atoned for by the 
granting of the most liberal opportunities for the education and 
the training of women. A noted American educator has said : 
"Educate all the men of the generation and leave the women un- 
educated, and every child under their influence begins his public 
education with all the disadvantages of his father. Educate all 
the females, and you will have a permanent impulse to the on- 
ward movement of the race which it can never lose." 

Special colleges for women, co-educational institutions, and 
the opening of professional schools to women, all indicate that 
the day of darkness for women has passed away, never more to 
return. The only danger would now seem to be that the desire 
of women for education is so great that some fear that the 
student bodies in higher institutions may become over-feminized. 
In the high schools of this city, of the 17,000 pupils, 10,000 are 
girls. In a number of colleges women already outnumber men. 

At the other end of school life, the most gratifying indication 
of school extension has been that of the kindergarten. To-day 
there are more than four hundred of these delightful, these demo- 
cratic, and these natural introductions to school life, whose edu- 
cational importance is becoming daily more recognized as one of 
the most wholesome extensions of our educational svstem. 

The extension of the school's use in both these ways, upwards 
by the establishment of high schools and downwards by the estab- 
lishment of the kindergarten, is by no means the limit of the 
school's extension. That the school duty is not complete when 



School Extension and Adult Education. 65 

it provides for children alone of the school age is now being recog- 
nized by the establishment of evening schools which afford oppor- 
tunity to those whose education has been limited or to those who 
have come to our shores after the school age, or to those who, 
being compelled to work, still desire to continue their improve- 
ment. A system of evening schools and of evening high schools, 
three of which are for women, indicates this extension. 

The chief item, however, in public school extension, to my 
mind, lies in the appreciation, on the part of the public, of what 
a teacher should be. The most important functionary in the 
proper state of civilization is the teacher. He or she it is that 
takes the child in his formative period and shapes it and moulds 
it for the future. For good or for ill, the teacher is the most 
effective social worker. How do we, in this country, in this rich 
age, and in the time of our greatest prosperity, regard the teacher ? 
I take the following statistics from the latest annual report of 
the United States Commissioner of Education : 

"There are 16,000,000 pupils attending the public schools of 
this country. Thirty years ago 39 per cent of the teachers were 
men; at present, 26 per cent." 

Is it desirable that the teaching force of the country be so 
largely feminine? Is not teaching a virile occupation? Is not 
the training of the child's mind as worthy of the fine intellect as 
well as the child's body? Perhaps the compensation given to 
teachers may tell the story. From the same report, the average 
monthly compensation for men teachers in the United States is 
$49.98 per month, and the average monthly compensation for 
women is $40.50. It is true that in the City of New York and 
other cities a higher rate of compensation prevails, and it is to the 
credit of New York City that the salaries paid to teachers do 
fairly attract trained men and women, so that they can be af- 
forded the opportunities of culture and travel ; but New York is 
an honorable exception. We may boast of our organized school 
system and of our great school buildings, but in the last analysis, 
the foundation of the educational arch is the teacher. President 
Garfield said that if you put Mark Hopkins at one end of a log 
and a pupil at the other, you have a university. In the State 
of New York, which employs about 40,000 teachers, less than 
5,000 are men, and the average annual salary for teachers in the 
City of New York is about $1,000; in the towns of New York 
about $350. A state will then only be civilized when it recognizes 
the true dignity and the true worth of the teaching profession. 

Within the last fifteen years the attention of the people has 
been drawn to the fact that the school house was a plant costing 
a large amount of money, but occupied for practically less than 
half the time. With the constantly increasing population, and 
with the inadequate places for gathering, it seemed as if so limited 

3 



66 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

a use of so costly a plant was not justified ; and with the apprecia- 
tion of the additional problems of education, additional uses to 
which the school house shall be put were devised. Among the 
most notable of these was the establishment, about five years ago, 
of the vacation schools. Prior to that time a private corporation, 
the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, 
spent a small sum in providing vacation schools. Their value 
became impressed upon the educational authorities, and now the 
beneficent influence of these vacation schools reaches thousands. 
During the summer but a limited number of the denizens of our 
city can afford to leave it, and the daily influence of the school 
being withdrawn, the children, whose only playground is the 
street, rapidly run chances of deterioration. The vacation school 
takes these children, utilizes their energy, directs their thoughts 
away from school routine, gives them a love of nature, takes them 
on excursions, employs their minds on wholesome reading and 
their hands in works of art and skill, directs their play and looks 
after their physical development ; so that, when the autumn re- 
turns, and the school doors are re-opened, they enter upon their 
school life refreshed and happy, almost equal to those who have 
had the good fortune to go to the seashore or to the mountains. 
The extension of the school house then so that it shall be used 
all the year round, just as now some of our great universities are 
open, is a great advance. 

Following upon the extension of the use of the school house 
for vacation schools, is the development of the school house as a 
social center. But a limited number attend the evening schools, 
and after a day's work the desire for social intercourse is strong 
in most human beings. Shall that desire be for what is low or 
for what is uplifting? Shall the intercourse be coarse or shall it 
be refined? What better place for the education of the social 
side of the human being than in the school house ? This thought 
has led to the use of many school houses as play centers and. 
recreation centers, where formal instruction is but a minor feature, 
but where refined games, gymnastic exercises, literary clubs, 
music clubs, etc., exist and are encouraged ; where civics is practi- 
cally taught ; and where the beginning of delightful, real, genuine 
refined intercourse is made possible. Under careful supervision, 
and a proper spirit animating the workers, it would seem that 
the time might come when the social settlements which prove so 
efficient now as moralizing and uplifting agencies, might come 
to an end, and that each school house, wherever situated, might 
become such a settlement, for each school house should be a center 
for educational and recreational, as well as instructive purposes. 

The extension of the use of the' school on the lines to which 
I have referred has, in the City of New York, been even further 
broadened. It is believed that education is required not alone as 



School Extension and Adult Education. 67 

a means of livelihood, but as a means of life ; and that as Bishop 
Spaulding says, "The wise and the good are they who grow old 
still learning many things, entering day by day into more vital 
communion with beauty, truth, and righteousness." 

It is the belief in this theory that has led the City of New 
York to include in its conception of the school a provision for 
adult education. Its underlying principle is that education must 
be unending. The city's prosperity and growth depend on the 
intelligence of its citizens, and as we have come to realize that 
the child is of supreme importance, so have we also arrived slowly 
at the conclusion that he, who from necessity has remained a child 
in education, needs continuous instruction. 

A librarian once told me that a young reader came into her 
library and said he wished a book entitled, "How to Get Educated 
and How to Stay So." He unconsciously spoke a great truth. 
It is one thing to get educated ; it is another to stay so. The 
school gives the beginning of education. Provision for adult 
education is necessary to enable us "to stay so." Of the school 
population of our land, about 3 per cent attend high schools, and 
less than 1^ per cent the colleges, universities, and professional 
schools. The great body of our citizens have but limited educa- 
tion ; and the very persons best fitted to profit by education and 
who need it most are in most cases denied its beneficent influence. 
Two classes are especially in need of it ; first, those between 14 
and 20 years — the time of adolescence, when conscience is dis- 
turbed and when character is being formed — at that time all the 
safeguards of true culture must be around youth ; and then there 
is a large class of mature people who have a knowledge of 
practical life and who appreciate the value of education most 
keenly. It is from such a class that our students — I call them 
that rightly — of electricity, of physics, of history, are recruited. 
A lecturer on physics wrote to me the other day : "The ques- 
tions put to me by my hearers were, as a rule, more intelligent 
than are asked in many a college." 

Sixteen years ago the Free Lecture Movement was tentatively 
begun in New York in six school houses. The total attendance 
was about 20,000. During the past year there were 140 places 
where systematic courses of lectures were given by 450 lecturers, 
and there came an attendance of 1,155,000. The growth in- 
dicated by the figures which I have just quoted must lead to the 
conclusion that this democratic movement for adult education is 
appreciated by a constantly increasing body of our citizens. The 
large number who have attended this year prove that the appetite 
for instruction on the part of the people has not been appeased, 
but that, like all good things, appetite comes with eating. As a 
rule, we should not boast of mere bigness ; but the fact that in 
the City of New York, including as it does all sorts and condi- 



68 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

tions of men and women, so large a number of persons, many of 
them old, wend their way and in many instances climb toilsome 
nights of stairs to the halls of instruction, is an admirable sign 
of the times. What is the magic power that draws to these halls 
— some of them far from comfortable — no matter in what kind 
of weather, so many earnest listeners ? The answer is that the 
common sense of our people is truly appreciative of the best that 
the teacher can give, and in these courses it has been the endeavor 
to give the people the best available from the staff of lecturers 
at our command. 

It can be safely said that the movement for adult education, 
popularly known as the free lectures, is no longer an experiment. 
It is recognized in the charter as an integral part of the educa- 
tional system of the City of New York. Its righteous claim to be 
considered such is shown by the constant endeavors to sys- 
tematically organize the instruction. In the first years of the 
lecture course, the lectures were not organized as consecutively 
as they are now. We know now definitely what our aim is. A 
passenger on the elevated train in Boston, somewhat the worse 
for drink, was carried around the entire system twice, not know- 
ing where to disembark. Finally, the conductor said to him : 
"At what station do you want to get off?" The man roused him- 
self sufficiently to say, "What stations have you got?" Some 
years ago we were in doubt as to what our stations were. Now 
we have found our definite station — the definite purpose is to ar- 
range these courses of lectures systematically to stimulate study, 
to co-operate with the public library, to encourage discussion ; or, 
in other words, to bring the best teachers to bear upon this problem 
of the diffusion of culture among all the citizens of a great city. 
Has this been done during the past year? One hundred and 
seventy courses of lectures, averaging six in each course, have 
been given, and the majority of these courses by professors and 
teachers in our universities. One course of thirty lectures on 
Nineteenth Century English Literature was given in a series last- 
ing through the whole winter at one center, and the audience at 
each lecture averaged over 300. An examination was held and 
certificates were awarded to those who had attended at least 
twenty-seven of these lectures and who had successfully passed 
two written examinations which were held. Thirty-one received 
certificates, approved by Columbia University. Thus we have 
university extension realized on a large scale. 

Thirty courses of lectures, consisting of five each, on "First 
Aid to the Injured," were given, examinations held and certifi- 
cates awarded. To co-operate with the Department of Health, 
lectures on "The Prevention of Tuberculosis" were given in 
thirty-four places by reputable physicians, so that the themes 



School Extension and Ad nit Education. 6& 

which have instructed our audiences have been first the facts con- 
cerning the body and its care. ,, 

Then the great phenomena of natural science have been ex- 
plained — how steam was harnessed, how electricity is put to 
man's service, how the stars move in their courses. The whole 
world has been traveled over. Starting from our own city, the 
natural beauties of our own land have been described. Every 
country on the globe, from Greenland's icy mountains to India's 
coral strand, has been described by travelers who have visited 
these lands and have braved dangers for our instruction. The 
development of citizenship has been fostered by scholarly treat- 
ment of the great epochs in our national history and the study 
of the makers of our national life ; and, to give a wider outlook, 
epochs in general history have been boldly outlined, for the his- 
tory of the world is one great drama, and all its acts form part 
of one stupendous whole. Music, painting and other forms of 
art have been presented to the people, and courses on the educa- 
tion and training of children, as well as municipal progress, have 
been listened to by eager auditors ; for the purpose, as stated be- 
fore, is to aid the joy and value of human life by diffusing among 
the mass of our citizens what some one has well called "race 
knowledge." 

The level of our citizenship depends upon the quantity of 
race knowledge which is made a concrete part of our social en- 
vironment. 

It has been my privilege to receive year by year appreciative 
letters from both lecturers and auditors — the lecturer emphasizing 
the value of the experience in its growth and power ; the auditors 
telling of the inspiration and stimulus derived from the lectures. 

A college graduate writes : 

"I believe there are many who think the lectures are only for 
those who have not had an opportunity to receive a high school 
or college education. The more intelligent the hearer, the greater 
the benefit derived." As to the benefits received from these courses, 
they are too numerous to mention, but I can gladly say that 
through my knowledge of 'First Aid to the Injured.' I have been 
of use to different persons from taking a cinder out of the eye 
of an elevated car conductor to fixing up the sprain of a friend." 

Another writes : 

"The majority of us know nothing but paved streets and 
brick walls. Nature stands at our doors, but we know nothing 
of her. These lectures give us instruction and mental exhilara- 
tion." 

And yet another auditor writes : 

"I shall try my best to pass the examination (referring to a 
course on 'First Aid to the Injured'), although I am very absent 
minded and nervous, having been a victim of typhoid fever a year 



70 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

ago and a remittant fever last fall. If I fail, I shall have, at 
least, tried my best and learned something to my advantage. I 
can not say anything in favor of the Monday lectures, as my 
husband only attends them, because I have three small children 
who can not be left alone. I am glad my beloved spouse stays 
with them Thursday evenings to grant me the benefit of the 
lectures." 

The fact has been established that the people will go to 
school ; so that there are now two kinds of lectures — one for 
larger audiences, where subjects which appeal to large bodies 
can be treated; and the other more special in its nature, where 
those who come are only interested in a particular subject. The 
entire winter at some centers is devoted to but one or two sub- 
jects, and a definite course of reading and study follow. The 
division satisfies those who are already prepared for higher study 
and those who are just entering upon an appreciation of intel- 
lectual pleasure, for, believing as I do in the educational purpose 
and value of these courses, I also believe to an extent in their 
wisdom from the recreative side. The character of our pleasure 
is an index of our culture and our civilization. A nation whose 
favorite pastime is the bull-fight is hardly on a plane with one that 
finds pleasure in the lecture lyceum ; so, if we can make our 
pleasures consist in the delights of art, in the beauties of literature, 
in the pursuit of science, or in the cultivation of music, are we 
not doing a real public service? Is not refinement, too, one of 
the ends for which we are aiming — not alone knowledge, but 
culture; not alone light, but sweetness? And if we can turn 
our youth from the street corners to the school playground, 
transformed into a temple of learning, are we not helping to at- 
tain a desirable end? 

To some these lectures have proven the only bright spot in a 
cheerless existence ; others have been greatly refined through their 
influence. After the lecture, many have crowded around the 
lecturer for further information, and upon reaching their homes, 
their conversation has not been the tittle-tattle of every-day life, 
but about Shakespeare, Lincoln, the Arctic explorations, or the 
wonders of electricity. Many a mind has been stirred from its 
lethargy ; and the lecturers have appealed to all classes of our 
citizens — the dweller in the tenement house or in the single house 
— for their message is to rich and to poor, man and woman, 
young and old, educated and uneducated. They show parents 
what a valuable thing education is and the parents become at- 
tached to the school. They are social solvents, for the school is 
a safeguard of democracy; and at these lectures the laborer and 
employer, the professional man and the mechanic attend. More 
has been done, for these lectures have been, to many, voices in 
the wilderness giving aid and comfort to many an aspiring soul 



School Extension and Adult Education. 71 

and revealing to it its own strength, for many a poorly dressed 
man may have in him the germ of gifts which it would be well 
to add to the treasury of noble deeds. In that great storm of 
terror that prevailed in Europe in 1793, a certain man, who 
hourly expected to be led to death, uttered this memorable sen- 
tence : "At this dire moment,'' he said, "mortality, enlighten- 
ment, love of country, all of them only make death more certain — 
yes, on the fatal tumbril itself, with nothing but my voice, I would 
still cry, 'Take care,' to a child that would come too near the 
wheel. Perhaps I may save his life. Perhaps he ma}' one day 
save his country." 

Summarizing again the aims of this movement, I would say 
that it is to afford to as many as possible the fruits of a liberal 
education, to make education a life purpose, to apply the best 
methods of study to the problems of daily life, so as to create in 
our citizens a sound public opinion. When it is remembered 
that a million and a half men, according to the last census, of 
voting age were unable to read or write — that is, 11 per cent of 
the total number — it will be seen how important the continuance 
of education is in a country whose government is determined by 
popular suffrage. And the greater portion of this illiteracy, let 
it be borne in mind, is in persons not of foreign parentage. The 
percentage of illiteracy among the foreign born is large, but 
among the native born of foreign parents, it is smaller than 
among those of native parents. And this leads me to refer to 
the addition to our course in the shape of lectures in foreign lan- 
guages to recently arrived immigrants. Nothing is more illus- 
trative of the hospitality of our city than is this provision for the 
acquaintanceship of future citizens, at the earliest possible mo- 
ment, with the history of our institutions and the laws of civic 
well-being. 

The lectures are illustrated largely by the stereopticon, and 
this teaching of the eye has proven a most effective means of 
popularizing knowledge and retaining interest. Mere speech is 
no longer sufficient. The actual thing talked about must be 
shown on the screen. In scientific lectures, abundant experi- 
ments accompany the lecture, and the interest in scientific sub- 
jects can be illustrated by the fact that a course of eight lectures 
on "Heat as a Mode of Motion" in the great hall of Cooper In- 
stitute attracted an average audience of 1,000 at each lecture. 
The lecture was followed by a quiz class, which lasted about an 
hour, and serious reading of such a book as Tyndall's "Heat is 
a Mode of Motion" was done by many of the auditors. 

Special attention is paid in instruction in American history 
and civics. On the birthdays of great Americans, in several por- 
tions of the city, the lives of these eminent characters form the 
subject of the lecture : and during the past two years, in order to 



72 Leans and Clark Educational Congress. 

help in the assimilation of the newly arrived foreigner, lectures 
have been given in Italian and Yiddish on subjects that relate 
to sanitation and to the preparation for American citizenship. 

The lecturers are recruited from the very best educators 
available. Our lecturers include the professors in our univer- 
sities, the traveler, the journalist, the physician, the clergyman — 
in fact all who have knowledge to impart and the power to do so ; 
and the fine spirit that characterizes our teaching force is worthy 
of emulation by all who are engaged in the noble work of educa- 
tion. It seems to me that no more honorable, and perhaps more 
difficult task, can be placed in the hands of a teacher who stands 
before audiences, such as gather in our school houses, for I know 
of no more sacred task than that of a teacher in a democracy, 
organizing as he does public opinion, directing reading, and in- 
spiring for the higher life. The ideal teacher in a scheme of 
adult education, as some one says, must combine with the uni- 
versity professor's knowledge, the novelist's versatility, the actor's 
elocution, the poet's imagination, and the preacher's fervor. 

Adult education as practiced in New York combines the best 
elements of university extension and reaches the working people 
of the city. It has been the means of realizing the belief that 
scholarship must go hand in hand with service, and that the duty 
of the university to the city and the state is to lift our citizens 
to higher ideals. 

The influence of the lectures on general reading is illustrated 
by the report from one public library, concerning which the 
librarian writes : 

"The register shows an increase of 321 members during the 
course of the winter lecture season, of which a large portion con- 
sisted of those who had first heard of the library in the lecture 
hall. As a result, the people select their books with more care 
and forethought, having something definite to ask for and on a 
subject in which their interest was aroused. A stimulus was 
created which led to more intelligent reading. You can not ex- 
pect all the people to appreciate and thoroughly enjoy a book until 
they know something akin to that subject and until their enthu- 
siasm has been aroused." 

This is what I feel tbe lectures are doing for those who have 
not had a school course. The platform library forms an integral 
part of the lecture movement. As the libraries do not possess 
sufficient duplicate copies of any particular book, there are loaned 
out to those who attend the courses, the leading books that are 
mentioned on the syllabus which is distributed with each course 
of lectures ; and tbe circulation of these books bespeaks the in- 
telligent pursuit of the subject in hand. 

The movement of adult education not alone gives a new inter- 
pretation to education and the teacher, but a new type of school 



School Extension and Adult Education. 73 

house which is to be open not only for a few hours daily, but at 
all times, and to be a place not alone for the instruction of children, 
but for the education of men and women ; so that there should 
be in each modern school house a proper auditorium, with seats 
for adults and equipped with apparatus for scientific lectures, and 
for proper means of illustration. 

There should be no necessity for citizens, desiring to add to 
their culture, sitting in the low and ill-ventilated and unattractive 
school yard or climbing sixty or seventy steps to sit upon a 
bench intended only for children. So a change in the construc- 
tion of our school houses may result from the expansion of this 
use. The newer school houses built in our city contain such 
auditoriums ; and the extension of the school for these varied pur- 
poses makes the school house what it really should be — a social 
center — the real, democratic neighborhood house. That we are 
approaching such an ideal may be inferred from the fact that 
some of the school houses in the crowded districts are open on 
Sunday. If the museum and the library are open on Sunday, 
why should not the school house, too, be open on Sunday and in 
its main hall the people be gathered to listen to an uplifting ad- 
dress of a biographical, historical, or ethical nature? 

It seems to me that the tendency should be to include in 
public education all that is best in the movements of philanthropy 
which mark our time. The interest of churches and philanthropic 
societies in our work is shown by the constant offering of church 
and other halls gratuitously for Board of Education Public Lec- 
tures. The church surely approves of spreading the gospel, "Let 
there be light." 

The unification of a great city is furthered by a system of 
public lectures. It is not brought about by the mere building of 
bridges. In a great city, neighborliness does not often prevail, 
but a community of ideas brings people together ; and when last 
year it was resolved to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the 
founding of New York as a municipality, it was celebrated not 
by a military parade or a monster banquet, but by a series of 
illustrated lectures and' open air exhibitions of the great develop- 
ment of New York City. About 100 such lectures were given, 
illustrating the history of the City of New York — thirty of them 
in public parks. As New York is the pioneer in this work of 
adult education, so is she the pioneer in this peaceful method of 
civic celebration. 

The provision for adult education emphasizes the fact which 
nuvv, more than ever, should be emphasized in our American life — 
that men are not old at 40. Dr. Osier, deserving of so much 
credit, has certainly done a great public service in awakening 
discussion on the question of the period of man's mental decay. 
What is needed in America, it seems to me, is more, not less, 



74 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

reverence for age ; more, not less, recognition of the fact that 
though there may be a climax to man's bodily development in 
early manhood, his mental development should be continuous, 
and as President Eliot says, "His last years should be his best." 
Scientists tell us that the brain of a man between 50 and 60 is 
at its best, and even at 60 the acquisition of knowledge may well 
be begun. 

The history of the world of the past and the present day is 
full of illustrations of the activities of old men, and no one has 
put it" better than Longfellow in these words: 

"But why, you ask me, should this tale be told, 
To men grown old, or who are growing old? 
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late 
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. 
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles 
Wrote his grand dipus, and Simonides 
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, 
When each had numbered more than fonr-«rore years; 
And Theaphrastus, at four-score and ten, 
Had begun his 'Characters of Men.' 
Chaucer, at Woodstock, with the nightingales, 
At sixty wrote the 'Canterbury Tales'; 
Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last, 
Completed 'Faust' when eighty years were past. 
These are indeed exceptions, but they show 
How far the gulf stream of our youth may flow 
Into the arctic regions of our lives, 
Where little else than life survives." 

Summing up the value of this movement, it may be said that 
it brings culture in touch with the uncultured ; it gives a new 
meaning to the uses and possibilities of the school house ; and not 
alone adds to the stock of information of the people, but furnishes 
them with ideas. In these days of shorter hours and larger op- 
portunities, the toilers will find in adult education the stimulus 
for the gratification of their intellectual desires and a larger world 
is given them in which to live. The best characters in literature 
will influence them, their daily labor will be dignified, new joy 
will come into their lives from this association with science, litera- 
ture, and art ; and they will find that true happiness does not come 
from wealth, but from sympathy with the best things in art, and 
with the love of nature. 

The public school is becoming recognized throughout our 
country as the most efficient form of training for intelligent 
democracy. Despite the criticisms of the public school, the con- 
stant trend of the morale of the American people is upwards due 
to its influence, and if the public school has failed to become the 
absolute panacea that the idealists would desire, is it not largely 
because of the failure to provide for education sufficient funds 
to bring about the desired results ? The public school should 
•occupy the most beautiful building in the town, and the teachers 



School Extension and Adult Education. 75 

in the public school should be men and women of the finest in- 
telligence, the highest culture, and occupy the highest social posi- 
tion. When such conditions prevail, when popular appreciation 
indicates that the highest service tha't one can perform is in the 
service of teaching, then indeed will the public school become 
what the vision of the dreamer would have it realize. The public 
school building of the present day, architecturally beautiful, with 
improved sanitation, with provision for physical development, and 
with its auditorium for lectures, is in a fair way toward bringing 
near that ideal, so well described in the words of Mr. Page : "We 
must make the public school everybody's house before we can 
establish the right notion of education. It unites the people 
and they look upon it as the training place in which everybody is 
interested, just as they look upon the court house as the place 
where every man is on the same footing." 

We, who engage in this work of education, are imperialists, 
but our empire is the empire of the mind ; for we believe it is the 
mind that makes the body rich. We are expansionists ; but we 
desire the expansion of opportunity for all men to live the true 
life. We believe in the open door; but it is the open door to the 
school house to which we refer. We should make it not alone a 
nursery for children, but a place of intelligent resort for men and 
women ; and we are democrats in believing with our honored 
president, that though education never saved a nation, no nation 
can be saved without it. 



MANUAL TRAINING. 
Abstract of the address given by Henry M. Leipziger. 

Dr. Leipziger said that expositions had materially helped 
educational progress as well as industrial advance. The first in- 
ternational exhibition in London in 1851 was in a large measure 
responsible for the provision for art and technical instruction 
which marks Great Britain's educational system. The manual 
training movement in the L nited States really dates from the Cen- 
tennial Exhibition of 1876. Through the attention there directed 
to the system of tool instruction exhibited by the Imperial School 
of Moscow, Russia, St. Louis and Boston established the first 
manual training schools in the United States. The expositions did 
not originate the manual training idea ; they called attention to the 
need that was beginning to be felt in the educational world. 

During the last thirty years both the curriculum and methods 
of teaching have been criticised and the greatest problem of the 
time, What shall be taught to our children ? is beginning to be rec- 



76 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

ognized as a subject worthy of statesmen. The belief is spread- 
ing that what we wish to put into a nation's life must be put into 
its schools, and further, as Professor Woodward so tersely ex- 
presses it, "the whole boy should go to school." 

There are intellectual, economic, physical and moral grounds 
for the value of what is called manual training. The school 
instruction of the past laid undue stress on language expression. 
Children do not go to school merely to learn facts, but to be 
trained how to learn, how to think, how to help themselves. The 
basis of elementary manual instruction is laid in the kindergarten, 
therefore the kindergarten teaching self-activity is so valuable a 
feature of elementary instruction. Things and nature, as well as 
books and words, should form part of our educational curriculum. 

The school curriculum should be related to life, and not 
merely to examinations. Living as we do in an industrial age, 
and the majority of the workers of the land being engaged in dis- 
tributive and productive branches, that is, manufacturing, agri- 
culture and commerce, the pupils in our schools should in some 
way be prepared for these important activities. The eye and the 
hand are such important aids in intellectual development that 
the training of these important members should form part of 
every natural system of education. Shall the schoolmaster exer- 
cise in writing only, the member on which the Creator has lavished 
so much skill ? Drawing and tool instruction should be included 
in every school curriculum. Besides the disciplinary value of 
manual training, it will impress many of the pupils in the schools 
that it is as dignified to engage in the fields of industry as it is 
to enter the professions. The boy who can use tools has a power 
which will enable him to get along in life better than he who is 
ignorant of their use. The fact that the schools teach something 
utilitarian will do much toward encouraging parents to keep their 
children in school as long as possible. The appreciation of the 
value of practical instruction may be illustrated in the New York 
public schools. There are several high schools, but the most pop- 
ular are the manual training high schools for boys and the tech- 
nical high school for girls. These schools do not turn out arti- 
sans, but they combine instruction in what are known as the lib- 
eral arts, with knowledge of the processes of commerce and the 
application of science and art to industry. The advocates of 
manual instruction believe thoroughly in the value of literary in- 
struction, but advocate that in a complete and harmonious educa- 
tion, art and industry must, too, be recognized. Domestic science 
should form part of the curriculum in girls' schools. The study 
of fire, food, clothes and health is particularly the province of 
woman. 

Manual training will prove a valuable agent in the upbuilding 
of moral character, and how to give moral training in our public 



Manual Training. 77 

schools is the subject which is now foremost in the minds of the 
leading educators of our land. Statistics, it is said, show that a 
large part of the criminal classes are young men who have had 
no industrial training. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle 
hands to do." 

Mr. Froude says, "The three R's of no industrial training 
has gone ; along with them are apt to produce a fourth R of ras- 
cality." Our country particularly should have the most liberal 
curriculum and all varieties of schools. Rich as our country is 
in its natural resources, now that it has definitely entered into 
the international arena, it enters into the field of commercial and 
industrial competition ; and to maintain its high rank it must rely 
on the brains of its citizens as well as on its resources. As we 
have learned much from Germany in the realms of higher learn- 
ing, we can profit, too, by a study of its wonderful system of ed- 
ucation which has for its object the training of each unit in its 
national life for the highest efficiency. Germany in many respects 
is in the lead in many industrial lines. This lead is due to the 
application of scientific knowledge and educational methods to all 
departments of human activity. In the city schools, as well as in 
the rural schools, provision should be made for trade schools, tech- 
nical schools and farm schools, and the result would be the in- 
creased intelligence of our people — greater prosperity and greater 
happiness. The manual training movement, broadening as it does 
the term education, should attract to the cause of teaching many 
of the ablest minds and secure both higher appreciation and higher 
remuneration for the teacher. As President Roosevelt said re- 
cently, "The teacher is the most important functionary in our 
social life." 



THE PROBLEM OF THE RURAL SCHOOL. 
By J. H. Ackerman. 

It shall be my purpose to discuss the rural school problem as 
it is presented in Oregon today. The graded school has its prob- 
lems, but in my opinion they are at this moment far less urgent 
than those presented by the rural school, and this must serve 
as an excuse for devoting a period of this Congress to the condi- 
tions and needs of the many one-room country schools, where 
more than half of the children of the state must receive theii 
elementary schooling — all that most of them ever get. 

These country children are in most respects happily situ- 
ated. The beauties of nature smile upon them and her magical 
voices call to them in the solitude of field and farm. They have 
a healthful environment. The example of virtue and honor in 



78 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

the home and the community is in the main before them. Duties 
many and continuous await them, and their labor is devoted to 
definite ends. They have time for quiet reflection and opportuni- 
ties to use their reason and. judgment. Their environment is 
well suited to develop a strong body and an active, vigorous 
mind. No class of our youth gives greater promise of usefulness. 
For the most part these children are well born. They have good 
bodies, with senses acute, nervous systems capable of responding 
to outside impressions, untainted blood, good digestions, capacious 
lungs. 

These children have a right to healthy, well-trained bodies, 
to the judgment and direction of intelligent parents, or guardians, 
to cheerful and helpful surroundings, to the best intellectual, 
moral and industrial training that the age affords, to membership 
in happy homes : in short, to everything comprehended in the 
words "education" and "training." They should have a better 
chance to enter upon and enjoy a fuller and richer life than any 
preceding generation of children ever had. These country chil- 
dren deserve and have a right to demand school privileges in 
every way equal to those accorded to the children of towns and 
cities. 

That the school privileges of the present accorded them are 
not equal to those provided in the graded schools of our towns 
and cities cannot be questioned by anyone at all familiar with the 
facts. It is conceded by all students of education that the condi- 
tions in the country schools are not today what they should be for 
the proper preparation of the country boys and girls for American 
citizenship. These conditions are wretched ; ill-kept, poorly-fur- 
nished, and inadequate school buildings, surroundings the most 
depressing, the schools too small to present conditions for suc- 
cessful work, teachers deficient in experience and scholarship, 
frequent change of teachers, poor classification, and the school 
year more than one month less in the average than prevails in 
towns and cities. 

It is not intended to convey the impression that there are not 
rural schools well housed, with trained, experienced, progressive 
teachers, and with teaching equipment entirely adequate, nor that 
there are not some localities whose pupils attend with a reason- 
able degree of regularity for a reasonable number of years. We 
are not unmindful of the fact that there are many country schools 
superior to some graded schools, and I hasten to say that not all 
teachers in the rural school are with little or no experience and 
of meager education. Some of our best teachers labor from choice 
in the country. Then, too, it often happens that the young teacher 
with her first school in a remote country district does work of 
the highest merit. I am persuaded that much of the teaching done 
in the schools under consideration will bear favorable comparison 



The Problem of the Rural School. 79 

with the best teaching in our cities. No teacher who labors in 
the country need apologize for the fact ; neither should she feel 
that the work given her to do is of less importance than that 
undertaken in the more pretentious city position. Nevertheless 
the fact that some country schools are doing good work only 
proves what may be done in all country schools where right con- 
ditions prevail. It is for such conditions that we are pleading 
today, and the number of such schools is not so large as to elimi- 
nate the rural school problem. 

The rural school teacher has so many disadvantages with 
which to contend, cold rooms, at times inconvenient boarding- 
places, many grades, including many classes, short terms of em- 
ployment, smaller salary than the city teacher, and few social 
pleasures and opportunities — all these tend to make the vocation of 
the rural school teacher undesirable. No wonder that we find 
the personnel of the rural school corps changing almost entirely 
once in every three years. While this state of affairs obtains, it 
will be well nigh impossible to secure a class of well-trained, 
fully developed, rural school teachers. In the good time coming, 
the rural school teacher will receive as much per month for as 
many months in the year as the city teacher, and the rural school 
will demand equal talent, experience and preparation. 

Am I asking too much for the country school when I so 
prophesy? If so, may I ask what crime the country boy or girl 
has committed which shall deprive him or her of just as good 
school conditions as is afforded the city boy or girl ? I hold that 
it is the right of every child to make the most of himself, to the 
development of his God-given faculties by education ; and that 
it is the duty of the state and of the community to give him this 
chance by providing adequate means for his education. It is the 
divine right of every child to have this chance, a right as inher- 
ent as his right to breathe God's free air and enjoy God's glad 
sunshine. It is the civil, moral and religious duty of every state, 
of every community and of every individual to help to give to 
every child this chance, a duty as binding as the duty of self- 
protection, as the duty of service to God and humanity. The duty 
of the community to give it follows logically from the right of 
the child to have it. 

Of all the imperfections enumerated, the country schools 
suffer most from the frequent change of teachers. Most of the 
teachers employed in the graded schools of the state are employed 
for the full year, beginning with the fall term, and it is the com- 
mon practice to elect the successful ones from year to year. This 
practice does not prevail in the country. This frequent change of 
teachers results in an enormous waste. No school is up to its 
maximum efficiency when teachers and pupils are strange. This 
loss is particularly great in the country school where the classifi- 



80 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

cation is less perfect and where the teacher requires considerable 
time in which to determine the status of the individual pupils as 
to advancement and as to ability to work. Now, if this process 
must be gone through with every few months it will readily be 
seen that the loss to our schools from this alone is very great. 

Furthermore, the country school loses in comparison to the 
graded school in the matter of classification. Where all the classes 
from six to eight grades must come before the teacher daily, the 
period for each recitation must be so short as to impair its effi- 
ciency. Then, too, the teacher, by giving attention to a larger 
number of subjects, cannot do the effective work that would be 
possible with her energy centered in the work of a few grades 
instead of so many. Again, the classes in fully three-fourths of 
our country schools are exceedingly small, containing in hun- 
dreds of instances but one pupil. In such instances all the in- 
struction becomes individual. Such a condition is unfortunate 
for any school. While individual instruction should never be 
precluded, there is yet a value in class instruction that is lost to 
the pupil who must recite by himself. Children learn from one 
another. In a class of pupils there is the contact of mind with 
mind. The spirit of emulation is awakened. The interest is 
sustained and advance is more rapid. 

As I have previously hinted, until the conditions are changed, 
the work of teaching a rural school will simply be used as train- 
ing for village and city schools, or as stepping stones to other 
vocations. This new country with its manifold opportunities 
offers too many tempting chances of steady employment at fair 
wages to permit a bright young man to go on year after year 
holding a seven months' position at $35 or $-10 a month. 

In view of these conditions, I believe that any unbiased mind 
will concede that so far as school privileges are concerned, the 
country child is placed in comparison with the city child at a 
great disadvantage in that a smaller per cent of his teachers are 
trained and experienced ; he must suffer the annoyance and loss 
incident to frequent change of teachers and in social privileges 
because of the prevalent small school ; he often loses the inspira- 
tion of numbers in his class work ; his school year is shorter and 
he has no high school privileges in his home district. Considering 
these facts, no one, I think, will deny that we have a rural school 
problem in Oregon. 

One day last spring a great longing came over me to visit 
once again my old school and look again into the faces of the boys 
and girls to whom I had bidden goodbye some years ago ; but 
when I came to realize that nearly every child had, in the natural 
course of events, passed out of the school, and that none would 
be left to greet me, a feeling of loneliness and responsibility 
came over me. Loneliness, on account of the absence of my voung 



The Problem of the Rural School. 81 

friends, and responsibility when I fully realized that I could not 
lift from my shoulders the weight of personal responsibility which 
has rested upon them while performing the duties of my present 
position. I somehow had never before had brought to me so 
vividly the realizing sense, that during that time not only the 
children of that particular school, but a whole generation of 
children had entered and passed through the elementary schools 
of the state. I felt that this educational work could not be 
postponed. It must be done now or forever go unaccomplished. 
It cannot wait until the mortgages are paid, the houses built, the 
factories established, the orchards and vineyards planted, and 
the streets paved. It cannot wait until poverty has been annihi- 
lated, drunkenness cured, public officials made incorruptible, the 
heathen Christianized, or right views of the public finance in- 
stilled into the minds of all citizens. No, the period of growth is 
the period of culture, and if this generation is to be educated, 
moulded, trained, it must be done while the minds and bodies are 
plastic. Any other interest of society can wait, but the high tide 
of educational opportunity comes but once to each generation. 
This doctrine is old and universally accepted. I am speaking plati- 
tudes ; but we are not yet acting in accord with our belief. If 
these children were Hambletonian colts there would be no ques- 
tion of their successful development into fleet and sure-footed 
racers ; alas, they are only boys and girls. 

It is often deliberately stated that because admirable results 
were developed in the exceptional individual in the old school with 
its lack of system and its infinitely irregular courses of study, our 
modern school, so carefully systematized, offers no improvement. 
That the method of the old school, or lack of method, would be 
today impossible is self-evident. Times and conditions have 
changed. The country grocery of a past age could not success- 
fully fill the place the department store occupies at the present 
time. The public school system without the system would fall to 
pieces. As a matter of fact, the school system is here, it abides, it 
is a fixed institution, yet in a way it changes, takes on new form, 
and gradually assumes new prerogatives. Years ago, Horace Mann 
said : "When anything is growing, one former is worth a thou- 
sand reformers." This, applied to the schools of a state, bears 
with it deep significance. It is the truth. The school system of 
any state is a growth. It is a development, an evolution. From 
decade to decade and generation to generation the school sys- 
tem is changed as new needs and duties arise. There is ever 
present the elements of adjustability and change. Fundamentals 
remain, non-essentials pass away. 

No nation or individual has ever become great without a 
high ideal. That the founders of our rural school had a high 
ideal there is no question. That we have not attained that ideal 



82 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

is equally true. Still we should ever be found holding fast to 
that which is good and constantly reaching out for better things. 
This is what thousands of teachers are doing in this broad land 
of ours, and all honor should be paid to them ; but it is necessary 
that we know just what we are trying to secure as a result of our 
work ; hence, the necessity of discussing again and again such 
questions as we have before us today. I contend that we have 
made progress. The courses of study of today, with all their 
faults, are vastly better than the meager courses of generations 
ago. The rural school is righting for its proper place in the 
line of battle. I have presented, and I believe without exag- 
geration, some of the weaknesses that cripple the efficiency of 
many of our country schools. A wise and liberal policy on the 
part of school boards will remove some of the weaknesses. The 
schoolhouse may be made attractive, the surroundings made 
beautiful, the length of the school year increased, and one teacher, 
and she a competent one, employed for the full year. But some 
of the weaknesses I have depicted are inherent, and will not be 
removed unless radical changes are made along certain lines. In 
suggesting changes, I fully realize that it is much easier to be 
destructive than constructive, and methinks I hear some one say 
that the conditions are only too true, but what remedy have 1 
to suggest. 

In proposing the remedtes I have ever striven to remember 
that the present rural system is the result of many a hard-fought 
battle on the part of its friends ; to remember how little one could 
do in the ordinary course of a lifetime in organizing and perfect- 
ing a new system, should every vestige of the present system 
be so obliterated that there would be no remembrance that such 
a thing as a school system ever existed ; hence, a person ought to 
be humble and hesitate to criticize unless he knows full well that 
he could evolve a better one. 

As partial remedies for these inherent weaknesses, the fol- 
lowing are suggested : First, the consolidation, where practical, 
of school districts and the transportation of children to centers ; 
second, a modified course of study for rural schools, eliminating 
certain parts prescribed for city schools, and providing for the in- 
troduction of work, especially in the elements of agriculture and 
of domestic science, and such further lines of industrial educa- 
tion as local conditions may make feasible ; and also providing 
work with reference to meeting the needs of the children in rural 
communities and not with reference to preparing a small per- 
centage to enter higher schools whose courses of study are formu- 
lated not to meet the demands of a great majority attending 
them, but to prepare the remaining small minority to enter some 
still higher school ; and, third, prohibiting by legislative enactment 
any person from teaching a rural school who has not been spe- 



The Problem of the Rural School. 83 

dally trained for rural school work in accordance with such a 
modified course of study as I have just indicated. 

It is safe to say that no other educational question of organi- 
zation and administration has been given equal consid- 
eration with centralization of rural schools, during the past five 
years. The National Educational Association watches with deep 
interest the solution of the problem of consolidation of rural 
schools and transporting pupils at public expense, now attempted 
in many of our leading states, and for which we, in our own 
state, have recently received legislative sanction. We believe 
that this movement will lead to the establishment of district 
and county high schools, and thus bring more advanced education 
to rural communities. Under the system proposed the farm be- 
comes the ideal place to bring up children, enabling them to obtain 
the advantages enjoyed by our centers of population, and yet to 
spend their evenings and holidays in the country, "under the 
constant, tender care of father and mother, in contact with nature 
and plenty of work, instead of idly loafing about town." 

Consolidation will often logically and properly center about 
towns and villages. Contact of the country boy with his rugged 
manner, straightforward honesty, plodding habits of persistent 
industry, with the boy of the city, molded by its cultured society 
and its atmosphere of taste and refinement, may be valuable to 
both. However, in the illustration here taken it is not intended 
to consolidate about a village. To provide better school facili- 
ties by consolidation, it is intended to conserve and broaden coun- 
try life, to make it distinctly more dignified, more honorable, 
more lucrative, and more attractive ; to educate toward it, not from 
it. In such a school the social life of the children is undenied, 
the circle of acquaintance is extended, classes are larger and there 
is the contact of mind with mind that is absent in the class of 
one pupil. And, finally the teacher is permitted to concentrate 
her energies on a few grades instead of teaching them all ; to 
have comparatively few recitations instead of many, and to 
have twice as much time for each recitation as in the school where 
the whole range of classes must come before her. Many people 
have the impression that consolidation means the abandoning 
of country schools and the transportation of the children to cities 
and towns, where they are taken into an entirely different environ- 
ment. But the consolidation I am contending for contemplates 
nothing of the kind. I believe the school environment in the coun- 
try is in many ways superior to that in the city. I want the 
country school to remain in the country, so far as possible, but 
I want it large enough for the employment of from two to five 
teachers, and with no teacher in charge of less than twenty-five nor 
more than thirty pupils. Such a school organization might cost 
the people more in dollars and cents, hence, the possible saving 



84 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

in money is not the ground upon which the change is urged. The 
end of consolidation is to get better schools and to multiply the 
benefits to the children. Consolidation commends itself to our 
favor because it offers the opportunity for proper classification, 
for the assignment of a reasonable number of pupils to the 
teacher, for regular and punctual attendance, and, hence, for a 
vast increase to the pupils of the benefits the school can bestow. 

The small school serves but few people, and is supplied by 
the taxes raised on a comparatively small amount of property. 
Neither the public interest nor the financial support is, therefore, 
likely to be such as to encourage the development of the school. 
While advancement is noted all around, in every business and 
every department of human endeavor, the little country school is 
likely to conform very closely to the type of school of a past 
generation. But unite the interests of a large number of people 
in the school, bring to its support the taxes on a larger aggrega- 
tion of property, and better conditions will be speedily and easily 
secured. Union and co-operation alone will make possible the 
twentieth century school. We may project the nineteenth cen- 
tury school into the twentieth century, but the school that keeps 
pace with the times and meets the demand of the age, must have 
the interest and financial support of many people and the serv- 
ices of a number of skilled teachers working in co-operation. 

With the consolidation of districts, in time will come good 
roads, improved carriages and wagons, telephonic communication, 
the daily paper, rural free delivery. These all annihilate distance 
and bring the people of a community nearer together than they 
were under more adverse circumstances in the old-fashioned dis- 
trict. Ours is a progressive age. W r e are constantly called upon 
to remove a blind allegiance to memorials of the past, and to stand 
for the attainment of that which is in harmony with the present 
and which inures to our future good. The initiative in the matter 
of country school consolidation, if taken at all, must be taken by 
the people in the rural communities. The change, therefore, 
cannot come suddenly. All the difficulties in the way, and there 
are difficulties, must be carefully weighed, the local conditions in 
each community consulted, and the benefits of the proposed 
changes proven to the people beyond dispute before the little dis- 
tricts will be abandoned and the larger school units established. 
I am glad this power rests with the people, for though changes 
sorely needed may be delayed, when they come they will be abid- 
ing and will have, each of them, the support of the people and 
will bespeak intelligent direction by the people. We should ac- 
cept the situation, make use of our opportunities, and success 
will eventually attend the effort. "Everything can be moved 
if we touch the right spring," and "adapt the means to the 
end." 



The Problem of the Rural School. 85 

The relation of the rural school to the farmer is an important 
one. The rural school gives, or should give, vitality to farm 
life as directly as food nourishes the body. It is the controlling, 
moulding influence that shapes human life. It ought to fit farm- 
ers for their duties as men and as citizens ; and with the present 
light of science to guide the school in the country in our day it 
ought to do more than this. It ought to fit men in some degree 
for their occupation as agriculturalists. If the country school is 
to fulfill its mission to its community as the handmaid of agricul- 
ture, it must be different from the town school. It must be a 
school adapted to the needs of the community in which it is. 
Until recently, to the shame of our nineteenth century scholar- 
ship, be it said, no effort at adaptation of rural education to the 
needs of the people has been made in country schools. All minds 
and all tastes have been forced into one mould of education. 
Country children have been treated as having but few needs. The 
farmer's needs are varied, most important, most urgent. To 
meet these he must have the advantage of the best schools, and 
the best schools for him are the ones that teach him the things 
that he needs to know. What does he need to know? What are 
the farmer's educational needs? As a man and a citizen, his 
needs are precisely the same as those of other men and other 
citizens — fully as great — no less. He must be taught the things 
that other citizens find it necessary to know — to read, to -write, 
to compute. The studies to meet these needs are well defined 
and for the most part are fairly taught. As an agriculturalist, 
his needs have not been so .well understood. He is dealing with 
the natural world. His enjoyment and his livelihood depend 
upon his understanding the laws that control in the natural world. 
He must, therefore, know nature. The studies adapted to his 
needs in this respect can scarcely be said to be taught at all in 
the country schools. I have said that he deals with natural 
things. Obviously, therefore, he ought to be instructed in these 
things, and hence, elementary agriculture should form a part of 
the course in rural schools, if they are to meet the educational 
needs of the people who surround them — the farming people 
of the state. Can this be done ? Yes ; but there must be an 
elimination from the present course of all non-essentials — all that 
has become obsolete — all that is not essential to fit him for his 
environment. This does not mean that certain subjects shall be 
omitted, but that the subjects themselves shall be pruned of all 
dead matter, so to speak. This can be very properly and profit- 
ably done in the subjects of arithmetic, history, grammar and 
geography. _ 

The objection to the introduction of elementary agriculture 
at the present time is the inadequate preparation of teachers along 
this line. The same condition existed at the time drawing and 



86 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

music were introduced, but where the demand was created the 
proper preparation was made. A favorite scheme of mine is to 
arrange the rural schools in groups and assign a teacher of agri- 
culture to each group — a teacher who is a specialist, who could 
go from school to school in his group, as the specialist in draw- 
ing", music and physical culture goes in the city from building to 
building and from room to room. What a world of good could 
be accomplished ; how the beauties of nature would grow on the 
minds and hearts of pupils in such schools when directed by a 
well-trained teacher. For a laboratory he has all the world at 
hand. May I again ask, is not the country boy and girl entitled 
to a special teacher for his or her special calling as is the city 
boy and girl? . Such a teacher could have a vehicle to convey 
his apparatus from school to school, which reverses the city 
method in that it moves the apparatus from class to class, instead 
of moving different classes to the apparatus. Do you call the 
scheme Utopian? It is entirely practicable. Do you shudder at 
the cost ? Well, that is something ; but not nearly what you may 
imagine. Oregon is good tenting ground for such a radical 
advance, and I believe the rural districts are ready for it, notwith- 
standing it would mean the uprooting of many hoary prejudices. 

The question of industrial education in rural schools has been 
a live one in the deliberations of the National Educational Asso- 
ciation. So much so that on July 6, 1903, the following resolution 
was unanimously adopted: 

"Resolved, That the National Educational Association be 
requested by the board of directors of the National Educational 
Association to appoint a committee to report to that body, after 
such investigation as may seem desirable, conclusions as to what 
should be undertaken in the field of industrial education in schools 
for rural communities, and to recommend such an appropriation 
as may be necessary for carrying on the investigation and prepa- 
ration of this report." 

This resolution resulted in the appointing of a committee 
and an appropriation of $500 for a committee of five to investi- 
gate and report to the council upon the subject of industrial edu- 
cation in schools in rural communities. 

I can do no better in concluding this phase of the discussion 
than to quote the general conclusions reached by the committee 
as reported to the National Council of Education at its July 
meeting, 1905, and also to refer you to the committee's argu- 
ment for industrial education in schools for rural communities. 
The general conclusions reached by the committee may be summed 
up as follows : 

1. That in existing one-room district schools a limited 
amount of nature study and work in the elements of agriculture, 
and hand-work for both boys and girls may be undertaken : that 



The Problem of the Rural School. 87 

in view of the quality of the teaching force available for these 
schools, the immaturity of the greater number of the pupils., the 
crowded condition of the programme, and the lack of adequate 
supervision, but little can be expected in the way of industrial 
education in this class of schools ; but where enthusiastic teachers 
qualified for the work, and pupils of sufficient maturity are 
brought together in the same school, something worth while may 
be accomplished, and that the effort for such accomplishment 
should certainly be made. 

2. That in the consolidated school having at least four 
teachers, one of whom is prepared to teach the elements of agricul- 
ture and manual training, and another domestic science, very much 
more in the field of industrial education may be attempted than 
in the one-room school, and with far better results. The com- 
mittee believes this to be true, because in such schools teachers 
may be secured with far better qualifications than are possessed 
by most of the teachers in the one-room schools, and because in 
many cases pupils will remain for one or more years after com- 
pleting the elementary school course, during which time the work 
in industrial education may be continued. In the consolidated 
school district, in most cases, new buildings must be erected. 
At small expense rooms may be provided for manual training 
and domestic science work, and a plot of land as a part of the 
school grounds set apart for illustrative and experimental work 
in agriculture. While the committee does not wish to enter 
into any argument in favor of consolidated schools for other rea- 
sons than for the facilities the}' may afford for industrial educa- 
tion, it wishes to endorse most heartily that portion of the report 
of the committee of twelve on rural schools, concerning the 
advantages of the consolidated school. 

3. That in the township or other distinctly rural high school, 
and in the village high school attended by a considerable num- 
ber of pupils from the country, a modification of courses of 
study should be made which shall provide for the introduction 
of work, especially in the elements of agriculture and domestic 
science, and such further lines of industrial education as local 
conditions may make feasible. To make this work a success, 
teachers must be secured who have made special preparation for 
it. For such schools a text-book treating botany from an agri- 
cultural and economic standpoint is greatly needed. 

4. That while the agricultural or industrial high school 
is found in but few localities, the character of the work already 
done in the existing schools of this class, the interest they 
awaken, and the hearty support they receive from the agricultural 
communities maintaining them, the history of these schools in 
foreign countries, the value of their work both for disciplinary 
and practical purposes, all combine to present the strongest rea- 



88 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

sons for the organization of schools of this type in large numbers, 
in agricultural communities. So thoroughly is the committee 
convinced of the importance of industrial education in rural 
communities and what is essential for making this education 
effective, that in their opinion the establishment of secondary 
schools distinctly industrial in their character and of the type 
mentioned, is an absolute necessity for the proper development 
and organization of the rural school system. 

5. That the agricultural colleges and experiment stations 
have already done much in the formulation of a body of knowl- 
edge essential in the field of industrial education, but that more 
yet remains to be done in putting this body of knowledge into 
visible form for use in elementary and secondary schools ; and 
that effort in this direction should be made a prominent feature 
in the work of the agricultural colleges of the country. 

6. That the mastery of such parts of this rapidly develop- 
ing body of knowledge as is within the capabilities of elementary 
and secondary school pupils, furnishes a mental training unsur- 
passed in extent and quality by the mastery of any other body 
of knowledge now regarded as essential in our common school 
courses and requiring an equal amount of time ; and that for 
utility value it is not equaled by any other body of knowledge 
at present acquired through the expenditure of the same amount 
of time and effort. 

7. That for the improvement of educational conditions in 
rural communities, the people in those communities must be 
educated to see and appreciate the possibilities and value of 
industrial education ; that the value of this kind of education in 
increasing the productive capacity of those being educated is the 
argument which appeals most strongly to the rural population. 
Therefore, in the beginnings of industrial education in any com- 
munity, immediate, practical results that will appeal directly to 
the interests of the people who support and maintain the schools 
must be made prominent by those concerned with its develop- 
ment. 

8. That it is possible and desirable so to organize the rural 
school system as to present an articulated series of schools from 
the elementary school to and including the agricultural college, 
in which the work at every stage shall be planned and adminis- 
tered with reference to the needs of the pupils at that stage with- 
out the elimination of any valuable feature in the present school 
system, and without abridging in any way the opportunities for 
advancement of such pupils as wish to enter other schools of 
secondary or higher grades. 

9. That in industrial education, as in every other form, 
the success of the work depends upon the quality of the teaching ; 
and that therefore, since effort for industrial education in ele- 



The Problem of tJie Rural School. 89 

mentary and secondary schools is comparatively recent and teach- 
ers have not prepared themselves in this field, special opportuni- 
ties and inducements must be offered to the teaching force to 
make the necessary preparation. 

The rural schools are instructed by teachers who for the 
most part are young girls and women bred in our cities and vil- 
lages and educated in graded schools. These young women, it 
is true, carry with them into their fields of labor the culture and 
refinement of the cities ; and yet they know but little about the 
home environment of the children they teach. They themselves 
have been educated for life in the congested centers of population, 
and the ideals they nurture in their pupils, the hopes and aspira- 
tions they stimulate, will be for the most part, the ideals, hopes 
and aspirations that will attract their brighter pupils to the cities 
for their realization and fruition. These teachers do not care 
to read and become interested in agricultural and horticultural 
literature. Farm life has for them no attraction. They are look- 
ing forward, as I have said, to the cities for the fruition of their 
hopes, and their pupils will become, as a result of the contact with 
their teachers, restless and discontented with the farm life and 
environments. 

It is to the normal and agricultural schools that the rural 
schools will have to look, more largely than they have in the past, 
for qualified teachers ; and when our normal schools shall recog- 
nize this need of specially trained teachers in rural districts and 
shall have set about to meet and supply this demand, then will the 
normal school problem be effectually solved, and the normal school 
will have found its true mission. 

Under the old plan of education, our schools, from bottom 
to top, influenced the movement of the people from the farm : but 
not towards the farm nor towards better farming, not away from 
the "man with the hoe" idea. The old philosophy was to educate 
a man first and then make a specialist of him. The other extreme 
which has had more advocates and more devotees was to choose a 
specialty and bend all the powers in that direction from early 
youth. The happy medium is best brought out by the agricultural 
school where, as in the farm home, the watchword is mix indus- 
trial work and manual training with school education. Our in- 
dustrial schools are revolutionizing education, utilizing literary 
culture in a practical way and making the science useful to the 
life of a community as well as qualifying them for science's sake. 
Our agricultural and mechanical schools are solving, have solved, 
some of the largest pedagogical problems of the age. Here are 
the basic elements of a new philosophy of teaching, and the one 
who first analyzes and interprets it in written form so as to make 
it generally useful will have added a valuable element to our 
pedagogical literature. The achievements in these matters are 



90 Lezvis and Clark Educational Congress. 

new, their fruits are crude, and not as yet collected in a com- 
plete system. But the leaven is working and there is reason for 
the most optimistic faith. 

Teachers must, then, be interested and instructed in a way 
of thought and in the methods of leading the youth of the schools 
under consideration into utilizing the things of the farm and the 
farm home as the basis of investigation and thought. Experi- 
menting in teaching, like inventing a new device, will result in 
many failures, but soon successes will accumulate into a peda- 
gogical system which can be used to great advantage by all 
teachers who are interested in this line of work. 

But, after all has been said, our schools, wherever found, 
will never be much below what the people demand, and if we 
had archangels for superintendents and teachers, and angels for 
school directors, the schools would never be made much better 
than the people want. Hence, one of the greatest problems, after 
all, is the proper education of public opinion. A man need not 
alwavs make a martyr of himself by standing out in advance 
of his time ; the average man is not called upon to do that, and he 
has no right to destroy his usefulness by insisting upon what is 
now impossible. We may learn a lesson in this respect from 
Abraham Lincoln, who, for a while, allowed public opinion to 
lead him, but when the time was ripe stepped forward to the 
head of a movement of progress and led it to the accomplishment 
of his purpose. 

The growth of the rural school system supplies material for 
a remarkable, a fascinating, even a patriotic and glorious story. 
No other great people ever gained such splendid educational con- 
ception for the masses, for an unlimited education for every son 
and daughter of the people. No other great people ever attempted 
to provide schools for every rod of such wide and sparsely settled 
territory as ours. No other great nation in the world has builded 
an educational system upon such plans, so flexible, so adapted to 
the national life. And it has not been done by a monarchy, or by 
a ministry through the use of dictatorial powers, but by millions 
of the great liberal people, moved by the highest motives, acting 
through primary meetings, and then exercising sovereign powers 
through representative and responsible assemblages. 

One of the creations of this common power is our unique 
system of popular education. American schools have from first 
to last reflected American economic and political conditions. The 
schools have advanced with the growth of the nation and the prog- 
ress of civilization. They are much better housed, they do much 
better work, they are more scientifically taught than in primitive 
days, but it was far easier for the early schools to meet the de- 
mands of their day than for us to see the tendencies of these seeth- 
ing times and meet the claims of the multitudes who are waiting 



The Problem of the Rural School. 91 

upon us. Yet we may by united, persistent, well-directed effort, 
lay our hands on the rural school, the school of the masses, this 
safeguard of society, this stronghold of the nation, and raise it 
to a higher and broader plane of usefulness than it has ever occu- 
pied. 

HIGHER AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 
By E. A. Bryan. 

In a singularly progressive educational age, no phenomenon 
has been more striking than the rise of the American agricultural 
colleges. A half-century has seen many achievements in educa- 
tion. It has seen the overthrow of blind subservience to authority, 
the establishment of the doctrine of academic freedom, the advent 
of the natural and physical sciences into the college curriculum, 
the realization of an organized system of public schools, the rise 
of the high school, and the emergence of the great state universi- 
ties. But none of these movements has been more radical or far- 
reaching or virile than the establishment of the land-grant colleges 
and the system of education springing therefrom. The word 
"agricultural," used in this connection, is generic and not specific. 
It characterizes that entire system of education inaugurated with 
the establishment of the land-grant colleges — a system which was 
a protest against and a revolt from the theory of exclusively lit- 
erary education and an acceptance of the fundamental doctrine 
of scientific and industrial education. 

I need not recite the history of this movement, for it is a 
familiar page of modern history. Some forty great colleges and 
universities endowed with large and increasing funds, equipped 
with splendid laboratories, shops, and farms, each provided with a 
great corps of investigators and teachers, filled to overflowing 
with students, exemplify the new doctrine and attest the greatness 
and success of the' movement, even at this early stage. The move- 
ment has reached other and older institutions, modifying their 
curriculum and methods. It has reacted upon science itself, shift- 
ing the incidence of scientific investigation and wholly modifying 
the method of science teaching. 

Repeating history in that the movement of educational forces 
is from above downward, the doctrine and the system are extend- 
ing to the normal schools, the high schools, the elementary, and 
particularly the rural schools. The farmers' institutes, the farm- 
ers' reading circles, the university extension work, and the agri- 
cultural experiment station correspondence (which, by the way, 
is the biggest correspondence school in the world) have become 
powerful agencies in the agricultural education of these members 
of the community who have passed the school age. 



92 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

Omitting for the present the discussion of the new viewpoint 
for scientific study which is involved in the movement, omitting 
the realm of the mechanics, arts, and other industrial phases 
which are an essential part of the movement; omitting manual 
training, which is identical in the fundamental principles involved, 
and turning to the specific use of the term agricultural education, 
it may be pointed out that agricultural education, as it exists 
today, is quite another thing than that looked for by the educa- 
tional theorists of a quarter of a century ago. It is equally con- 
trary to the hopes and speculations of many "practical" men who 
championed the establishment of agricultural schools. That great 
statesman, Senator Morrill, guided, as it were, by instinct rather . 
than by dogma or theory, "builded wiser than he knew." He 
initiated the legislation giving rise to the agricultural college 
movement with a wisdom and a breadth and a truth surpassing 
that of the pedagogical theorist, or the utilitarian who was his 
contemporary. The word agricultural as describing the new 
institution is generic rather than specific. It stands for a system 
of education rather than training for a specific occupation in life. 
It aimed at, to use his own words, "the liberal and practical edu- 
cation of the children of the industrial classes (and in America 
that means most of us) for the several pursuits and professions 
of life" and it suggested many ways and means whereby "agricul- 
ture and the mechanic arts." the great twin agencies in production, 
might likewise be agencies in an educational system, and that, too, 
without excluding the man}- useful existing agencies for educa- 
tion. 

The Morrill act of 1862 was a protest and a proclamation. 
A protest against the narrowness and idiocy and baleful tenden- 
cies of the existing regime in college education, and a proclama- 
tion of freedom therefrom. 

I say Senator Morrill was wiser than the philosopher or the 
practical man of his day. The "practical" man thought that the 
system should confine itself to the teaching of processes and for- 
mulae and recipes. It should begin with the commandments — the 
"Thou shalts" and "Thou shalt nots" of agriculture. Stress was 
to be laid upon the part which the body was to perform in agri- 
cultural work. The president of one of the agricultural colleges 
of the early day told me that the practice in his college was to find 
out, when a new boy came, what he could do. If he knew how 
to build a fence, he was put to fence building ; if he knew how 
to milk cows, then he was set to milking cows. The "practical" 
man had great fear of science study. Not that he wholly es- 
chewed science ; on the contrary, he had a profound, a supersti- 
tious reverence for science. He always spelled it with a big 
"S" — if he could spell. He approached science as one of olden 
time would have approached the oracle or the witch's cave. 



Higher Agricultural Education. 93 

Scientific dicta were cherished as the Knights Hospitalers cher- 
ished a piece of the wood of the true cross, or the bones of a saint. 
Should the deliverances of the scientists upon occasion conflict 
with the undeniable facts in the case, then he was simply no scien- 
tist at all — a false prophet. But for the agricultural student to 
study science, that was quite another thing. A little of it might 
not hurt, for these tremendous words had a new and strange and 
wonder-working sound, as though they were words to conjure 
with, but too much of science might bewitch him, and then he 
might not farm. Our "practical" friend had a profound fear of 
anything that did not smell of the cow stable, and an insane jeal- 
ousy of any subjects which could not be described as agricultural, 
as he understood it. He consented to the inculcation of knowl- 
edge, such as the scientist and practical man might put down in 
the form of .facts and rules, after the manner of the almanac. 
Along with this he was willing that the student might have any 
amount of bodily training which might be deemed necessary, 
provided he didn't learn too much, for it was almost a tenet in 
certain quarters that the student should be kept ignorant enough 
so that he would be compelled to farm, and thus the end of the 
system be attained. His premises assumed that agriculture is a 
science, that is, that there existed an accurate and complete and 
systematic body of knowledge known as the "science of agricul- 
ture." and a perfect system of practice, both objective entities of 
which the student might become possessed. With proper appli- 
cation he might learn them both. Now, I need hardly interpolate 
that there existed then no such body of knowledge nor any such 
system of practice, and even if they were true, for today, they 
would not be for tomorrow, and even if he swallowed the one 
and clothed himself with the other, a little later he would be as 
helpless as ever. One of the most serious obstacles with which 
agricultural education has met has been this same assumption 
on the part of the public that there exist a ready-made and per- 
fect science and an art of agriculture which any one with reason- 
able application might get possession of for his own. 

The educational philosopher of the day, on the other hand, 
did not have a very much clearer or more adequate view of the 
matter than the "practical" man. Devoted as he was to the dis- 
covery of a philosophy which explains and sustains the existing 
literary system, he listened with ill-disguised intolerance to the 
plea for agricultural education, consenting that there might be a 
need for instruction in agritulture, and agreeing that there was 
a remote academic connection between the primary sciences and 
the art of agriculture, but denying in his heart the name of 
"education" to this instruction. He agreed with the "practical" 
man that the learning of agriculture was a learning of processes 
and formulae and recipes and practices. He likened it to learning 



94 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

a trade, and, to his way of thinking, the learning of trades was 
remote from education. Agriculture was an objective thing to 
whose laws and practices man must conform himself. The man 
must "Orientalize" himself, to use President Wheeler's phrase, 
and adapt himself to a fixed science and art. Of course, in so far 
as the so-called "agricultural education" was learning to farm, it 
might be useful, for some must learn to plow and to mow, to reap 
and to sow, but there was great fear that the plow and the scythe 
and the reaping hook might do for him what the hoe did for that 
poor man who stands over yonder in the famous picture. They 
lyingly tell us that the hoe is the author of that stupid, ox-like 
gaze, that low, dull brow, that heavy, hopeless body. I tell you 
nay, that bright, keen, beautiful weapon, the hoe, mightier than 
the sword, has been and is the instrument of peace, the instru- 
ment of plenty, the instrument of conquest of the earth by man, 
and it is rather the symbol of civilization and enlightenment than 
of intellectual degeneracy and death. Against oppression and tyr- 
anny, against ignorance and superstition it has uplifted man, has 
exalted him infinitely more than sword and crown and king. But 
pardon the digression. 

The educational philosopher, I say, agreed with the "prac- 
tical" man as to the program for agricultural instruction, but 
denied to it the name of education. "For education," said he, "is 
a thing of the mind, of spirit, and not of body. It is an inner 
movement wherein the mind of man rises and expands and devel- 
ops strength and power. The mind through the study of language 
and logic and metaphysics and poetry rises above the gross and 
sensual to the contemplation of 'pure soul' and the highest life." 

Now, the new education had little room for "pure soul" to 
range up and down in, and there is little wonder that some appre- 
hension was felt lest this "instruction in agriculture," seemingly 
so innocent, might not, as a matter of fact, prove harmful to "real 
education." Great fear came upon them all because of the danger 
to "pure soul" from contact with earthly things, from utilitarian- 
ism and from the commercial spirit — the world, the flesh and the 
devil. The danger from using the common things of nature 
about us in our educational process must not be underestimated. 
If, by chance, some mind had pierced the veil and had discovered 
nature's laws and principles and had understood her materials ; if 
with constructive imagination this mind had constructed a Brook- 
lyn bridge, so that that which in the perfection of truth had been 
bodied forth in the mind of its creator now stands before our 
duller eyes as an objective reality — "Ach, mein Gott," how ter- 
rible an example of utilitarianism and of the commercial spirit is 
this. This bridge cost money. It makes money for somebody. 
Ah, how "pure soul" must have suffered under this gross com- 
mercialism. It matters not that under the old regime doctors 



Higher Agricultural Education. 95 

sawed off legs and administered pills for money, that lawyers 
pleaded for fees, that preachers preached for salaries, and teachers 
taught that they might earn an honest penny wherewith to buy 
bread and butter, they at least were educated under the "culture" 
regime, and no narrow commercialism could have blighted their 
innocent souls. Learning paradigm of nouns and verbs could not 
commercialize them ; patiently with grammar and dictionary trans- 
lating stupid foreign phrases into stupider English phrases could 
not do it ; the categories of logic could not do it ; the philosophy 
of Spinoza or Kant could not do it, and so, happily, they escaped 
the utilitarian spirit. But if the human mind in its educational 
processes shall have resorted to gross nature, shall have groveled 
in the dust of the earth, as it were, the commercialism of the world 
will cling to it like the dust. Against such opposition did the new 
system have to make its way. But, happily, now we are past all 
this, and the doleful forebodings of the educational philosopher 
who loyally defended the existing regime (I hope with no personal 
loss by reason of his loyalty), and the "practical" man, who looked 
to the industry rather than to the man for whom the industry 
exists, have been swept along with the rest of us until here we 
are with a great new system coming in on the high tide, and we 
are all saying, how little we knew, how little we guessed at the 
truth as we find it. The fundamental principles of the agricultural 
or industrial movement are all but universally admitted now. I 
call it the agricultural education movement, for it was the first 
Morrill act which gave force and vitality to the movement, and the 
popular word "agricultural," representing the greatest of all the 
productive industries, has clung to the entire system. It was this 
legislation that obtained entrance for the doctrine to many of the 
great universities. I verily believe it has been the chief source of 
that virility which has caused these institutions to rise like young 
giants as they are, rejoicing in their new-found strength. It was 
this, the greatest piece of educational statesmanship of the last 
century, that introduced into college work the mechanic arts, the 
engineering courses, mining and metallurgy, the applied sciences, 
the art and science of agriculture, domestic economy, etc., etc., and 
it was this that gave that dignity and vitality to manual training 
which it now enjoys. Right here I wish to complain of the effect 
of certain terminology. One of the commonest phrases standing 
for a multitude of things in the modern curriculum is "Manual 
Training." It stands for .a whole conception or system of instruc- 
tion, as we have heard in the past few days. But the phrase is 
such as to deceive even the very elect. "Manual Training" — that 
is, "hand training" — body training — that is the contrasting thing 
with "Mind" training. Now, I protest against this. I will con- 
sent to contrast the new "hand" training, with the old "mouth" 
training, or I will consent to the contrast of the new "industrial" 



96 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

training with the old "verbal" training, or the modern "scientific" 
system, with the old exclusively "literary" regime. But I will not 
consent to any phraseology which assumes that under the old sys- 
tem it was "mind" education, and under the new it was "not mind" 
training. Even so great a friend of the cause of manual training 
as our good Dr. Leipziger used frequently this unfortunate con- 
trast. He spoke of "industrial" education as contrasted with "in- 
tellectual" education, "mind" training with "body" training. There 
is no such distinction. The old is the "verbal" system, the new is 
the realistic. "Thinking" and "doing" are contrasted too strongly. 
All conscious "doing" is but the expression of mind. Only the 
imbecile and the idiot act without thought. Some of the assump- 
tions of the old regime were perhaps natural. We think in words 
(mainly). They are our chief medium of communication. 
Through words we gain much from the present and very much 
from the past. They are an important and useful means of educa- 
tion. But how foolish we were to think of the verbal system as the 
only source, the only medium. How blind were we to cling to the 
verbal system, and the literary method, when, if we had but opened 
our eyes, we should have seen that it was not exclusively valid, 
when the larger part of our working material had been gotten in 
other ways. So there were words, words, words, definitions, 
descriptions, rules, formulae, dogmas, bookfuls of alleged scien- 
tific data, mostly false, and authority and authorities without end. 
It was learning — great erudition — to be sure, but not always edu- 
cation. The verbal system was at best very imperfect. The 
"word" is but a symbol after all, and through it we "see as through 
a glass darkly." Under the new system we "see face to face." 
Then we studied the representatives of things, now the things 
themselves. Do not misunderstand me. In defending and ex- 
plaining the new doctrine, I am not declaring invalid the old sys- 
tem, nor even the more or less imperfect explanation of it. I be- 
lieve in literary education. I believe in idealism. And I regret 
the imperfect vision that fails to see the idealism in the "practical" 
subjects of the curriculum which are so lightly sneered at. The 
boy does not strike the ax twice in the same place without the 
intervention — nay, the directing and controlling power — of mind. 
The reaction of every such act, so directed, upon the mind is im- 
mediate and vital. Nothing compares in efficacy with this kind of 
reaction. Under it the mind rises and expands and develops 
strength and facility as our educational philosopher required in 
his ideal system of education. It is absurd to require all the activ- 
ities of man to be translated into words before they can be used as 
mental pabulum. "Education is a matter of mind?" "To be sure, 
it is a matter of mind." "It consists in subjective changes?" "Cer- 
tainly." The old Greek poet was right. "Mind it seeth; Mind it 
heareth ; all else is deaf and blind." But you who have labored 



Higher Agricultural Education. 97 

so assiduously to separate the consideration of the human mind 
from the human body must not forget that when you stand before 
the human eye, the mind is there; and when you speak into the 
human ear, lo, it is there. When the hand consciously touches 
you, or touches any other thing, animate or inanimate, there in 
the finger tips stands the mind. It reveals itself to you in the 
joyous or sad countenance, in the brow lit with high resolve, or 
pale with abject fear, in glistening eye and trembling lip, in shouts 
of triumph or cries of despair. So, too, through these same chan- 
nels by which it reveals itself, expresses itself, it receives into its 
inner soul all that may come to it, and it digests and assimilates 
what it can, growing in size and strength and activity thereby. 
It is thus that play educates, thus work educates, thus all our 
social activities have been, are, and always will be the chief in- 
strumentalities in the education of the race. These so-called prac- 
tical subjects then are mind trainers — every one of them. The 
laboratory method — the method of handling things — weighing, 
measuring, analyzing, combining, is a mind training method. 
Agricultural education is education — genuine, real, education — 
producing mind changes, a changed being, equipped with new 
and useful instruments for doing things, knowing how to go 
at it, thinking perforce, and reasoning, idealizing, if you please, 
and as much as you please. The material with which the mind 
works is somewhat different from the old material. It cannot 
do, to be sure, without the same old instruments — it must read, 
have language and books, the science of numbers and form, etc. — 
but it has added new and better instruments for the purpose of 
mind growth along certain directions, namely, that of the life 
which the student is to lead. 

But I have gone so far forth as to leave little time for even 
a glimpse at what has taken place and the present status of indus- 
trial education. Briefly, it was the rise of modern science and 
the scientific method that ushered in the new era. Genuine 
science stood a long time knocking at the door while the 
educator refused admission. I wish we had the word "science- 
taster" as we have the word "poetaster," and then would I say 
that the science-taster first gained admission to educational cir- 
cles. It was the man who had some knowledge of systematic 
science, who revelled in the rolling nomenclature and thought it 
the real thing, who loved the romantic story that science could 
tell, and who startled the eyes and the ears of the groundlings 
with the more spectacular phenomena of the science. Later the 
educator became more friendly to science, if so be it was only 
"pure." If it dealt with abstractions and aimed at no useful end 
it might not engender the commercial spirit and so corrupt the 
youth. A school of scientists arose "who were of purer eyes 
than to behold iniquitv," and these sought for the truths which no 

4 



98 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

one might prostitute to a commercial end. But there came a 
day when some dared to say, "If, peradventure. a useful truth 
should emerge you would not condemn Sodom for one's sake." 
And the educator said, "I will not condemn it for one's sake." 
And then bolder men arose and said, "I will seek for useful 
truth. I have equipped myself with this science as a tool, an 
instrument ; I know its elementary laws ; I have the paraphernalia 
with which to work, and I will seek for truth that may bring bet- 
terment to mankind. I am here to solve such problems, useful to 
our common human welfare, as this science is capable of solving." 
With this stage of progress came one of the most remarkable and 
important pedagogical changes which we in our lives have wit- 
nessed, namely, the entering upon what I would call the "instru- 
mental" stage of the subjects in the curriculum. All the while 
the new scientific method had been reacting upon the older sub- 
jects of the curriculum. History was revolutionized, political 
economy could hardly be recognized in its new form, literature 
felt the influence of the new method, language study was changed 
in purpose and uses. Strangely enough, some began to study 
languages in order to use them. The several sciences in every 
stage became "instrumental" to an ulterior end. They had been 
studied before as ends in themselves. Chemistry for chemistry's 
sake, botany for the sake of botany. Xow they were studied 
to be used as tools for doing things with. Every subject began 
to serve as a means to an ulterior end. This is almost the most 
striking feature of the existing regime. But a curious result 
now appears from the setting of concrete problems and utilitarian 
ends for the scientist — and, for that matter, a similar result has 
come to the historian, the sociologist, the philologist, from the 
pursuit of the same method. The result is the story of the Holy 
Grail repeated. The knight-errant goes forth to seek in all climes 
for the Holy Grail ; he finds it at his own doorway in the hands 
of the humble and despised. After our knight-errant quest 
for pure science, abstract truth, for freedom from contamination 
with earthly things, so the pure truth may be the guerdon of 
the search, lo, it appears, that in seeking through these lowly 
things about us, lowly ends, suddenly there emerges with startling- 
distinctness before our vision the great fundamental principles of 
science. A man not far from here sought for a winter wheat that 
had stiff straw so that it would not fall down, close sheathed so 
that it would not shatter, and good milling qualities. He found 
it not in the Orient or the Occident. Then he said : Go to, let us 
create it. So he took grains, each having some of the desired 
qualities, and began a series of breeding experiments in which 
hundreds of new varieties were produced. What was his aston- 
ishment, long ere the desired end was accomplished, to see stand- 
ing out before his eyes, certain universal principles of the heredi- 



Higher Agricultural Education. 99 

tary transmission of characteristics. It is thus always. The 
ascetic sought a holy life. Not all the scourgings and fastings 
and hermitage could bring perfection. The simple peasant 
mother bore children and trained them to obedience and thrift. 
She nursed them in sickness and encouraged them in health. 
She fed the poor and needy. She was a kind neighbor, a true 
wife, a good mother. She died a saint. I do not fear contradic- 
tion when I say that to solve the simple agricultural problem 
arising in the orchard, the garden, the field, the forest and the 
range, demands the highest kind of knowledge, the largest skill 
in technique and the broadest range of mental power. Anything 
less than this in the service would be suicidal. I do not hesitate 
to say that through these researches lies the largest possibility 
of the advancement of pure science. I do not hesitate to say 
further that of original scientific investigation today in botany, 
zoology, entomology, bacteriology, chemistry, the agricultural 
experiment stations and the colleges of which they are a part, to- 
gether with the Department of Agriculture, are doing tenfold as 
much as all other scientific men combined in this country. I 
could say almost as much in the realm of physics and mechanics 
if I were to include with the colleges their own product. 

I intimated awhile ago that so far from there being a large 
and well developed body of knowledge which could be called 
the science of agriculture at the outset, there was nothing of 
the kind. The data had to be gathered, and there were none 
capable of gathering it. Great dissatisfaction arose. The "prac- 
tical" man was disgusted, and there were charges and counter- 
charges of bad faith. Not only the scientific data had to be gotten 
and a body of scientists capable of gathering and using it had 
to be created, but the whole pedagogy of the subject had to be 
invented. You may think that a little matter. But in this day 
when men are accustomed to say that one subject for the cur- 
riculum is just as good as another, take something which has 
not been used heretofore for that purpose and cast it into acad- 
emic form and devise pedagogical methods for its profitable use. 
and you will then understand what it means to do this. To be 
ready to meet a class profitably in the classroom and laboratory 
five days in the week, four weeks in the month, ten months in the 
year, means much, and we now wonder at the amazing rapidity 
with which a practical programme has been evolved. Little won- 
der that in earlier days the students were few. To give no other 
explanation, there was little in the course that the student could 
use with profit. But today there is a well-considered and adequate 
programme. The pedagogy of the subject is in a very satisfactory 
condition. I have seen soil studies adapted to the simplest ele- 
mentary stages of education, and to the most advanced investiga- 
tions which were and are as beautiful illustrations of the scientific 



100 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

method and scientific training as I have ever seen, and far hetter 
than many of the so-called sciences in the older curriculum. There 
is an army of the most skillful investigators of America, enthusi- 
astically conquering the realms of agricultural science where a 
quarter of a century ago there was scarcely a professor of agri- 
culture worthy of the name in America. The universities and 
colleges have chairs filled by able men, the very name of which 
will sound new and strange to many of you. What would you 
think of a professor of agronomy? There are many such in our 
largest colleges and universities. The differentiation of subjects 
is such that it requires a whole corps of men to teach the differ- 
ent departments of agriculture proper. 

The growth of the agricultural colleges has not taken place 
without difficulty. There were those who were willing to prosti- 
tute their trusts for ulterior ends. Others were helpless by rea- 
son of their incompetency. It required creative talent in its 
service, and that is rare. It required time, and the public is im- 
patient. It required students, and these had to be lured from the 
farm and the shop, ill prepared and with little desire on their 
part, and with a provision for their wants that gave little promise 
of satisfaction. The old educational dogmas dominated the 
farm as well as the city, and even to a greater extent than it did 
the city. Many mistakes were made. One of the greatest was due 
to the low and inadequate conception of the movement. A cheap 
low curriculum was established in many places. The objective 
theory was accepted by the college as well as by the public. A 
half-baked product was turned out, helpless among educated men, 
and not at home among those from whose ranks he came. There 
was, and is yet, the necessity without doubt of connecting up with 
the rural school and the rural community. But this did not neces- 
sitate the conversion of the college into a hybrid institution in- 
capable of useful accomplishment. The move is inevitably from 
above downward, and the top should have been high enough. 
The college should have been, and should be. all that the name 
implies, and ordinary means of adjustment can be found for 
bridging the chasm between it and the elementary school. 

A word as to the subjectiveness of agricultural education. 
The student does not learn empirically a vast accumulation of 
appropriate facts. Rather does he get a new attitude toward na- 
ture about him. He comes to believe that there is a rational 
explanation for all phenomena, a rational solution for all prob- 
lems. He learns the method of solving problems, the scientific 
method. He applies mind to the manipulation of matter — with 
the usual results. We are in the stage where we assert that it is 
our business to educate men, not simply to make farmers. Educate 
men rightly by means of an agricultural curriculum and the rest 
will take care of itself. People are going to do what they econom- 



Higher Agricultural Education. 101 

ically must, and the method of making a living is going to take 
care of itself anyway. Economic considerations are going to 
control in the matter of occupations. What we propose to do is 
this : Out of the broad modern curriculum we are going to select 
the agricultural courses. These will include the primary sciences,, 
of course, but the problems set in their study will be economic. 
Plant production, that is to say, the study of the anatomy and 
physiology of the plant and the adaptation of its environment to< 
it and the study of that environment — soil, light, heat and mois- 
ture — animal production and farm management will furnish the 
backbone of the course. I undertake to say that under such a 
curriculum properly balanced with that of the literary type 
just as satisfactory results will be obtained as under any other, 
whether for practical or for culture purposes, as under any cur- 
riculum for higher education now offered. It is admitted that 
the mind's efficiency is greatest along the lines of its training. 
The activities of a mind educated under such a regime will find 
their greatest opportunity in agricultural production. One ob- 
stacle of old was the little demand for services of this kind at 
remunerative prices. Agriculture is a capitalistic enterprise, and 
few trained men had aught but their services to sell in the market. 
But it is growing different now. I predict that high service will 
secure a high reward here as elsewhere. I know a graduate of 
our Own college only four years out of college who receives a 
higher compensation for his services alone in a purely agricultural 
enterprise than does the president of the college from which he 
was graduated. 

There is, then, no doubt that the agricultural college move- 
ment which took legislative form in 1862 included the entire 
sphere of industrial education, and that it has been responsible 
for shifting the attitude of science itself as well as of broadening 
and rendering more adequate our educational philosophy. There 
is no doubt that agricultural education means the changing and 
developing of the human mind by means of new instrumentalities 
and along new lines, giving to it a new attitude toward the uni- 
verse and equipping it with new instruments for the struggle 
with its environment. There can be no doubt that a valid system 
of education has been evolved and an excellent program devised 
for the work. There can be no doubt that this is the forerunner 
of vast sociological changes, that the field for educated men has 
been greatly extended, that the great productive realm is to feel 
the influence of mind in its most active and efficient form, and that 
as a result of this the movement has great humanitarian aspects of 
which we have scarcely dreamed. If we were far enough away to- 
day to get the perspective we would see that we are already in the 
midst of a great agricultural revolution springing directly from the 
new education. If the movement increased production alone it 



102 Lezvis and Clark Educational Congress. 

would affect every nation, civilized and uncivilized, on earth. For 
every additional mouthful of bread, every additional stitch of 
clothing, every added necessity of life distributes itself automati- 
cally to the ends of the earth. " And if we forget the effect of the 
new system on the men through whom these changes are wrought, 
yet we know that the economic betterment of other men through- 
out the world in turn reacts on their mental, moral and spiritual 
possibilities. Thus I say advisedly that the agricultural college 
movement was the greatest piece of statesmanship of the past 
century. 

EDUCATION IN REFERENCE TO OUR FUTURE IN- 
DUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 
By Howard J. Rogers. 

The title of this paper implies the possibility of a change in 
school policy and methods. It is exactly the problem we have to 
face. There is no reason why its imminence should worry or 
annoy us, for it is the principle upon which the evolution and 
progress of men and of nations rest. It has seemed distressing 
to many that just as we had comfortably finished "correlating" 
the work of the various grades, and when we were on the verge 
of "enriching" sufficiently the elementary and secondary years, — 
so that a well-earned peace and unity might settle over the land 
and soothe us in their dreamy and contented embrace, a spectre 
should appear to disturb our rest and renew our discussions. But 
it is probably our salvation, for the man who rests and the nation 
which rests falls out of step with the world's advance. Unceasing 
work is the price of progress, and only those rest who die or sleep. 
This spirit of educational unrest seems to demand of us the reason 
for two main interrogations. The first we should put something 
like this : In view of the truth that 96 out of every 100 children 
in the elementary grades do not enter the high school, and that 
three out of every four children in the high schools do not go to a 
college, technical or professional school, and that only for the re- 
maining one is there an opportunity to be fitted at public expense 
for his work in life, what should be done for the other ninety- 
nine to give them a fair training for their future occupations ? 

The second question is complemental to this and comes from 
the cottnting-room, the workshop, the factory and the field. Can 
you not send us boys and girls from the elementary grades, or 
from the high schools, with some idea of practice, and with a 
training to make them more efficient for work and lessen their 
period of instruction by us ? Both are asked in the seriousness of 
long denial, and both must be fairly and satisfactorily answered. 
With the predilection of a Yankee for answering a question by 
asking one, Americans will say, what ought we to do, and what 



Future Industrial and Commercial Development. 103 

can we do ? Your consideration of these points is the task of the 
morning. 

I have never seen a good definition of education in its rela- 
tions to the state. Philosophers have rarely agreed upon one since 
the days of Grecian polemics, but it is axiomatic that the justifica- 
tion for the expenditure of public money on education is to in- 
crease efficient service for the state. The divisions of opinion 
which have characterized the policies of nations and the beliefs of 
men have been threefold : First, the kind of education ; second, 
the extent to which it should be carried ; third, the classes of peo- 
ple to which it should be accorded. Educational controversies in 
the United States have centered about the first two points. There 
never could be under our constitution any divergence of opinion 
on the last. 

There exists also on the part of an educational system a recip- 
rocal responsibility to the state which requires that the system 
produce the variety of talent demanded for the progressive needs 
of the state, and of the highest grade of efficiency which a trained 
and alert teaching service can secure. The conditions in this coun- 
try have tended to create an elastic and responsive system of ed- 
ucation. Since colonial days it has been of irregular growth, but 
rapid and entirely unhampered. Till late in the first half of the 
nineteenth century there was no uniformity in school-room meth- 
ods or administrative details, but in each part of the country in- 
struction of children was governed by the customs and traditions 
which were derived from the early settlers of that section. 
Through the storm and stress of colonial days, however, educa- 
tion had come to be regarded as a fundamental principle in the 
development of the new country, and the same theory which con- 
trolled the early development of the states and the nation may be 
said to have applied with equal strength to the growth of the 
schools, namely, equal opportunities for all citizens and freedom 
from tradition and precedent. Whether the schools had their 
origin in New England, where Puritan English ideas predomi- 
nated, or in New York, where the liberal spirit of the Dutch 
toward popular education influenced their growth, or in the South, 
where the influence of wealthy landholders, with continental ideas 
of education for the few, had been less favorable to popular educa- 
tion, they rapidly acquired an individuality and rugged power 
which led to an incredibly swift development toward free public 
instruction when the appointed day arrived. The strength 
of the American school system has been its unquestioned prece- 
dence in the minds of the people over all other matters of admin- 
istration, its careful nurture on independent bases, and the vigor 
with which the different forms have grown into a related system. 

The characteristics which have marked our educational 
growth in the past are the strongest indication that it will meet 



104 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

the demands of the future, viz : freedom from the trammels of 
creed and precedent, and a responsive adjustment to the material 
needs of the country. Our own educational history furnishes the 
most striking proof of this statement. From 1830 to 1SG0 a 
mighty force, which affected not only the public support of educa- 
tion, but also the character of the instruction itself, was the in- 
tense industrial life and the development of unsettled territory 
which followed the applications of steam and electricity. For 200 
years after the foundation of Harvard, higher education had fol- 
lowed the time-honored curriculum, and so long as it was ex- 
pected to turn out only lawyers, doctors and preachers it sufficed. 
But an age of material development was at hand, which has 
already run over half a century, and which reads like the tale of 
a magician. The population of the country has increased from 
ten to eighty millions of people; the broad acres of an entire con- 
tinent have been brought under subjugation ; systems of transpor- 
tation bind every part of this great country in close relation ; New 
York and Portland are no farther apart than were Boston and 
Philadelphia at the beginning of the period ; the inventions of 
science in every field of human endeavor are a catalogue of won- 
ders ; the growth of applied arts to public service has become a 
prime consideration. The genius of man seems to have sprung 
forth fully armed to meet the call of opportunity. All this has 
demanded a variety of talent and a wealth of special training 
which the old institutions could not furnish, and higher education 
has been constantly undergoing changes to meet the demands 
of commerce and industry. Schools of technology and applied 
science have sprung up by scores ; and the curriculums of the 
older universities have been expanded to furnish the required 
training. The percentage of students in higher educational insti- 
tutions has increased at a ratio double the increase of the popula- 
tion. To put the matter briefly, it may be said that the colleges, 
universities, professional and technical schools, whether state sup- 
ported or privately maintained, have put themselves in closer rela- 
tions with the people, and are aiming to give the highest degree 
of practical training to their graduates. 

This marvelous growth in material achievement and the 
correlative growth of our educational system are the distinctive 
marks of the nineteenth century. Changes quite as important are 
now taking place in the industrial and commercial world at the 
beginning of the twentieth century. They are the changes due 
to the minute applications of science to the industries, of the prac- 
tical annihilation of time and space in the business world, the 
subdivision of labor, and the more careful observance of the prin- 
ciples of economy, particularly in checking waste and the prodigal 
use of raw material and natural resources. 



Future Industrial and Commercial Development. 105 

A study of the commercial reports and reviews for the past 
five years taxes our credulity and our powers of comprehension. 
Royalty forms partnership with American enterprise and develops 
the heart of Africa ; combinations of capital and labor render pos- 
sible operations of an incredible magnitude and forestall failure ; 
billion-dollar combinations are the rule instead of the million ; 
continents are substituted for countries as fields of activity. It 
almost confuses our standards of reasoning and forces a read- 
justment of our mental perspective. Tbere are no longer geo- 
graphical boundaries to limit the operation of capital, and while 
political divisions will continue to exist, and various forms of 
government be administered for all time to come, the limitations 
imposed upon both by the identity of commercial interests will 
go far to secure the same international unity and harmony in poli- 
tics as now exists in business. International combinations of 
capital, and co-ordinate commercial interests are the greatest peace 
factors of the present age. There is no millenium foretold in 
these words, and no white-winged dove of peace will hover over 
the universe till human nature has undergone a higher evolution 
than the last three thousand years have seen ; but the control of 
one human passion by a paramount one is characteristic of man, 
and similar interests, a common liability, and a mutual oppor- 
tunity for gain existing between people of different nationalities, 
will hold long in check animosities which might tend to destruc- 
tive war. 

Standards of trade and exchange are formulating in inter- 
national terms and units, and it is no longer enough for a manu- 
facturer to know that he has a good product sufficient for the 
needs of his locality, his state, or even his country ; he must know 
what the foreign manufacturer of similar articles is doing, what 
are the points for or against his own goods, and how they can be 
adapted to the wants of all consumers, or he will awake to find his 
markets disappearing and his credit gone. Nations have grown 
large in the past twenty years, but not so rapidly as the world 
has grown small. Where a few years ago it was deemed interna- 
tional competition for the products of America to sell against 
those of England, Germany and France on the soil of these 
respective countries, and vice versa, it is now an incident, and 
competition means the clash of these goods with those of other 
nations for the trade of Africa, of India, and the Far East. As 
a consequence of this expansion of industry and reaching out for 
markets, successful competition means a thorough knowledge of 
all technical details, constant outlook for improved processes, 
economy in handling and transportation, and an appreciative 
knowledge of the wants, the languages, and the prejudices of the 
consumers. 



106 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

The result of this growth of trade, and the responsibilities 
which it involves, implies clearly the great need of trained and 
expert service in every ramification of an intricate and complex 
commercial problem. Not only business relations, but the poli- 
cies of nations are involved, for the diplomacy of the present age 
is more concerned with the control of markets than the acquisi- 
tion of territory. It is the man of commerce who rules the world 
today and dictates the action of governments. The man of war 
is the servant, not the master, and is held for use only in remote 
contingencies. And, after all, what is the work of a government 
but the carrying on of business on a large scale ? Read the mes- 
sages of the presidents for years back, and they deal almost 
exclusively with the problems of commerce and industry — the 
money standard, currency, banking, tariff, interstate commerce, 
rebates, trusts, taxation, canals, irrigation, forestry, etc. The 
underlying principles are the same. What is true of export and 
foreign trade is equally true of domestic and retail trade, which 
are closely involved with each other, and a situation is at hand 
where all slack in production must be taken up and no leeway 
allowed for inefficiency in service, or waste in material and 
methods. 

In the United States the commercial and industrial pursuits 
are now recognizing this necessity of a closer economy. The 
average American business man has succeeded in spite of bis 
methods, and sometimes in spite of himself. This country has 
been so rich in its resources, so absolutely prodigal in its oppor- 
tunities, that the necessity of conserving and closely articulating 
the processes which control the raw material, the product, and its 
disposition, has never been keenly felt. This is not to be wondered 
at. Our agricultural lands, rich with the accumulated fertility 
of countless ages have yielded so bounteously that all minor sav- 
ings have been neglected ; our forests, vast and seemingly illimit- 
able, have furnished to unscientific and eager hands a wealth of 
material without regard to the awful waste ; our mines have given 
up their obvious treasures to the first frenzied rush of seekers, 
and hold still in the earth that was trampled under foot, fortunes 
for the scientific worker ; our transportation lines have been laid 
hurriedly and with a disregard for permanence and economy 
which is compelling their rebuilding and reorganization ; our 
trades and industries have been affected by this same spirit and 
policy, and have almost unconsciously been carried on with waste, 
with extravagance, and with some criminal negligence ; our pro- 
fessional and scholastic methods have not escaped the charge, of 
superficiality and lack of true scientific spirit ; in short, in every 
sphere of industry, permanence and scientific economy have been 
sacrificed to expedience and haste. Our country has presented the 
.curious anomaly of men in every trade, business, and profession 



Future Industrial and Commercial Development. 107 

pursuing their vocation only just so long as nothing more lucrative 
came to view. True, we have grown rich and powerful. We 
could not help it. Our natural resources can discount our methods 
and still make our enterprises wonderfully profitable. When the 
seeker of fortune pitches his camp by the light of the stars and 
wakes in the morning to find that he has slept upon a gold mine, 
it does not tend to economy in development or care in method ; 
more than that, it brings discontent to every person who hears of 
it. The development of our country reads like a book of wonder- 
tales, which is undoubtedly the reason why many of our methods 
are as inexplicable. Nor is the end yet. We have barely made 
acquaintance with our possibilities ; we have been in a hurry too 
great to cultivate them. Our population has increased in a genera- 
tion from forty millions to eighty millions, and our resources are 
quite capable of supporting ten times that number. There are 
undiscovered possibilities of wealth residing in our fields, our 
forests, our mountains, and our seas, greater than any past devel- 
opment, but they will yield their returns only to scientific treat- 
ment and economic principles. This is the problem that now con- 
cerns our industrial world, and for the solution of which it 
rightly looks for help to the schools. 

Before going further, let us limit the boundaries of this dis- 
cussion. It has already been hinted at in the interrogations put 
at the beginning of the paper. The colleges and universities, the 
professional and technical schools of the United States are the 
equal of any in the world, and are doing their work in a satisfac- 
tory manner. Our lawyers, our doctors, — some of our teachers, 
those who have the proper training, — and in particular, our engi- 
neers, command the respect of the world, and are as advanced as 
the knowledge of our age permits. Our immediate problem lies 
with the training of those between the ages of twelve and twenty, 
and the efficient equipment of the non-commissioned officers in the 
great army of industry for their leadership of the rank and file. 

It is permitted to profit by the experience of others, and what 
our natural riches have caused us to neglect, necessity has forced 
other nations to adopt. So well have their efforts succeeded that 
we find them dangerous in the competition in spite of their handi- 
cap. Notable, of course, are Germany and France, and in this brief 
survey of the efforts of tbese countries to improve the effective 
training of their youth, I shall draw at will from the excellent 
consular reports made to the Department of Commerce and Labor 
during the last two years, and from our own observation of the 
exhibits of these nations at Paris in 1900, and St. Louis in 1904. 

At the close of the war of 1870, Germany's position in the 
commercial world was, like her political unity, at its beginning. 
It is not a country rich in natural resources, nor particularly 
favored for exchange ; the people are not especially inventive ; it 



108 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

has enjoyed peace, but not security, and has been burdened with 
the most expensive standing army in the world. Yet within this 
period she has come to challenge England, France, and the United 
States in the very industries in which they are strongest. There 
are three reasons for this in Germany's case : the government, the 
people, and the schools. The former has never lost an opportunity 
to foster its industries and labor, hence a carefully constructed 
tariff, a state system of industrial insurance which combines state 
aid, compulsory thrift, and employer's liability ; factory legislation 
which protects employes and does not hamper production ; a 
closelv articulated school system, and other minor details. The 
German people are devoted to systematized work. The employer 
is vigilant and active ; they send young men away to learn, they 
bring instructors to the factory ; they encourage skill and research, 
and support innumerable institutions for the people's welfare. 
The working classes, on their part, are exemplary in conduct, 
and as a rule content, notwithstanding evidences of social unrest 
which crop out at occasional elections of the Reichstag. The doc- 
trine of do as little as you can and get as much as you can for it, 
has not met with a favorable response. An article in the London 
Times describes the remarkable success of a new novel entitled 
"Jorn Uhl." It is a story of simple peasant life, by a country pas- 
tor, and the moral is summed up by the old farm housekeeper as 
the peasants trudge home after hearing a sermon — "Well, I sup- 
pose we must go on working till the evening, and be as good and 
kind as we can." That this book — the very antithesis to every- 
thing in modern literature — should have taken the German public 
by storm is of no little significance in determining that great fac- 
tor of industrial progress — the content of the workman. And 
here, by 'way of comparison, I can see no immediate prospect of 
hope in the United States. Contentment is a word not in the 
lexicon of American labor ; and the unrest engendered by possible 
political preferment, and by the chances of sudden wealth ; the 
discontent aroused by the accumulation of vast fortunes and the 
envy of successful speculations, preclude a growth of pride in 
long continuance in an occupation. For this condition there will 
come no relief till our country has become so thoroughly settled, 
and its resources so completely under control, that the unexpected 
ceases to be the rule. This fact will vex our growth for many 
years to come. 

The third and predominant factor in German progress is the 
schools. The school system of Prussia, with its compulsory at- 
tendance laws, enforced to such an extent that in 1903, out of 
5,754,000 children of school age only 548 were unaccounted for, 
is well known, — as are also the scope of the realschulen and gym- 
nasia ; we need to consider only the schools established for special 
training for industrial arts and commercial practice. Since Von 



Future Industrial and Commercial Development. 109 

Liebig's example, nearly fifty years ago, of conducting a great 
laboratory for the training of practical chemists, from which 
sprang a small army of young chemists who have made applied 
chemistry the most vigorous and successful of Germany's indus- 
tries, both the state and local authorities have been firmly wedded 
to the policy of maintaining advanced schools for scientific study 
in every phase of industry. To recur to the chemical illustration, 
it is estimated that over seven thousand chemists are working in 
municipal, private, or corporate laboratories, carrying on original 
research for small salaries and an interest in any discoveries of 
value they may make. As a result the country controls the lucra- 
tive trade in inorganic and carbon compounds. The careful anal- 
ysis of soils and skillful manufacture of fertilizers to supply the 
lacking elements have practically reorganized the methods of 
agriculture. For example, the percentage of sugar in the sugar 
"beet has thus been raised from 5^ per cent to 13 per cent, and a 
moribund industry put on a paying basis. There is no need to 
multiply specific examples. Similarly, to quote from the report 
•of Consul-General Mason : 'Tn the iron and steel manufacture, 
and in the whole long, varied schedule of textile production, it is 
■only the possession of a vast army of skilled chemists, metal- 
lurgists, designers, dyers, weavers, and spinners, recruited year 
"by year from graduates of the universities and technical and indus- 
trial art schools, and backed by salesmen and merchants elabor- 
ately educated and trained for commercial work in foreign coun- 
tries, that has enabled Germany practically to monopolize certain 
special forms of manufacture, and, despite limited natural re- 
sources, to conquer and maintain a place in the front rank of 
industrial nations." 

Not all the larger institutes are state supported, but are more 
often maintained by the joint efforts of state, municipality and 
chambers of commerce. A fair type is the Zittau Technical Insti- 
tute, established for the benefit of the textile industries of that 
part of Germany. Its purpose is to produce superintendents, 
managers, overseers, foremen, designers, etc., by means of prac- 
tical and theoretical instruction. The courses of study cover 
one and a half or two years. The tuition is nominal, ranging from 
$2.50 per year in the evening classes, to $47.50 in the higher day 
classes. Drawing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, geography, and one 
foreign language, preferably English, are the chief subjects taught 
outside of the practice work of the trade. This school covers a 
higher field than the hundreds of continuation and technical 
schools with which Germany is dotted, and is comparable more 
directly with the Lowell Institute of Massachusetts, which aims 
to turn out foremen and superintendents for the textile industry. 

The basis of Germany's great progress has included commer- 
cial schools as well as industrial. Their number has increased 



110 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

enormously in the past few years, and those of you who were at 
the St. Louis exposition last year may recall the remarkable 
exhibit of these schools. They are, generally speaking, of three 
grades : the continuation school, the secondary school, and the 
school for higher instruction. The first named are intended for 
apprentices and boys who can spend a few hours per day at school ; 
the course is usually planned for three years, and includes com- 
mercial calculations, geography, correspondence, bookkeeping, 
stenography, and two foreign languages. The municipal commer- 
cial high school at Cologne, founded in 1900, has a six-year course 
covering the ages of ten to sixteen, and adds to the above subjects, 
algebra, geometry, natural sciences, history, law, French for six 
years, and English for three. The higher institutions, of which 
the Academy of Social and Commercial Science, founded at 
Frankfort-on-the-Main, in 1901, is the foremost type, has a distinct 
purpose, and aims to provide instruction on commercial, economic 
and political matters to merchants, bank officials, consular offi- 
cers in particular, secretaries of boards and chambers of com- 
merce, etc. Its lecture courses contain every topic of commercial 
and national interest. Entrance to the school requires certain 
qualifications, and ample opportunity is given for a thorough 
understanding of the social and economic principles of the day. 
Seven more of these commercial universities are contemplated for 
the very near future. 

So much time has been taken in describing the methods of the 
Germans, who have gone into the matter with their characteristic 
thoroughness, that but few words can be said of France, Belgium 
and other nations. The industrial and commercial education of 
France is the outcome of twenty years of statutory enactments 
following appeals from the chambers of commerce, based upon 
the decline of technical skill in French industries. The decree of 
1892 put the ecoles pratiques de commerce et d'industrie directly 
under the jurisdiction of the minister of commerce and industries, 
and they have been widely established and carefully fostered ever 
since. They aim to furnish clerks and workmen ready to take 
their places in the counting-room and workshop. And, I may say 
in passing, that an arrangement has been made with the trades 
unions of France whereby credit, sometimes full, is given on the 
period of apprenticeship. Some such arrangement will have to 
be made in this country, but at present it looks as though it would 
be a difficult task. 

The primary schools of France, under the ministry of public 
instruction, continue as heretofore to give a certain amount of 
technical instruction as a preparation for apprenticeship. The 
training in all of these schools is practical and thorough, and some 
of the products on exhibition at Paris and St. Louis were not 
to be distinguished from the work of skilled labor. 



Future Industrial and Commercial Development. Ill 

In Belgium, to quote the words of the Directeur General of 
higher education, in a letter written to the speaker, "the adminis- 
trative energy of the government in recent years has been turned 
to the practical realization of what is considered in Belgium the 
imperative law of modern pedagogy, I'ecole de la vie," which may 
he liberallv translated as school training for the necessary work 
of life. 

There is no need of multiplying foreign examples. The ten- 
dency and its causes are evident, the results are easily noted. We 
are chiefly concerned with the extent and the manner in which 
their experience may benefit us. In comparing the educational 
systems of France, Germany and other nations with that of the 
United States, one condition must always be in mind, and that is 
the maintenance under government supervision of a dual system 
of schools, parallel so far as the ages of the children are concerned, 
but one designed to lead to the trades and industries, and the 
other to the cultural professions and occupations. The former is 
free for all children, the latter requires tuition. The former is 
avowedly planned to give a superior training for the crafts and to 
perpetuate class distinctions and hereditary occupations ; the latter 
is the continuation of the time-honored humanities adapted to 
modern theories. The primary schools of France, Belgium and 
Italy, and the realschulen of Germany are of the first class and 
•carry the training of children from the ages of five and six to 
fourteen and fifteen, and dismiss them into the trades with con- 
siderable credit towards their term of apprenticeship. The sec- 
ondary schools and the gymnasia of the same countries instruct 
children between five and sixteen, generally speaking, and prepare 
for the universities and technical schools. 

This policy of one kind of training for the working classes 
and another for the professional and leisure classes is repugnant 
to American ideas, and totally at variance with the theory of our 
beginning and our development. It can never be introduced into 
•our educational system so long as our public policy is based upon 
the glorious and true principle, contained in our great magna 
charta, of equal opportunities for all to advance in accordance 
with their ability and deserts. There can be no dissent from this 
principle, to be an American. Hence our educational policy, lest it 
might seem to waver an iota from the rigid letter of the principle, 
has prescribed the same training for all alike. The fault is not with 
the principle — but with ourselves in its application. It was never 
the intention of the fathers of our country to maintain that its citi- 
zens were equal in any respect but in their status before the laws of 
God and man. The natural law, which is the law of God if you 
will, of differentiation of types and species, cannot be set aside 
bv anv document, however formal ; and the makers of the Declara- 



112 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

tion of Independence would be more surprised than any one, could 
they know it had ever been construed otherwise. 

But there are a few facts with which we sum up, all implied 
in the foregoing discussion, which bear so directly upon the situa- 
tion as to be conclusive : 

First, this country has grown so large and its needs are so 
varied that it is impracticable to train all children alike: second, 
we are in duty bound to afford an opportunity to the vast majority 
who live by manual labor to fit themselves as well as possible for 
their work; third, our commercial and industrial supremacy de- 
pends upon high efficiency in every part of its complex organism, 
and the schools must furnish the means ; fourth, the changes in 
curriculum which are thus involved must leave to the pupil, or his 
parents, the absolute choice which preference may inspire, or lim- 
itations of fortune or lack of ability compel. 

Tt is one thing to diagnose a condition, another to prescribe. 
Happily, our country is so large that in one part or another we 
may always find a trial under way from which we may derive in- 
formation. The point is to force a thorough appreciation of the 
subject on public attention and cause all to do what one may be do- 
ing ; to bring every municipality to do what one may be doing well. 
It does not seem advisable materially to disturb the eight-year ele- 
mentary course. Its mind-informing and mind-developing foun- 
dations are a necessity for good citizenship, whatever vocation 
the pupil chooses to follow. In the seventh and eighth grades a 
special elective manual training course might be given, or more 
manual training introduced, which would not interfere with the 
cultural studies, and be of value not only for objective training, 
but for the process of selection. 

But in the secondary school work, between the ages of four- 
teen and eighteen, that most dangerous period of life when self- 
supporting and self-respecting work is a necessity, the greater 
changes must come. These changes to be effective must include 
the systematic organization of a class of schools available for 
those who are at work, as well as for those who are preparing for 
work. Manual training high schools, and commercial high schools, 
are being established in many cities of the country, notably New 
York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. The 
work of the commercial high schools, if based upon the recommen- 
dations of the special committee from the Business Department of 
the National Educational Association, will undoubtedly meet our 
present wants, supplemented, as they are, by commercial depart- 
ments in universities. It will at least do for a beginning. The 
manual training high schools as existing in many cities will .not 
meet the demand made upon them by industrial conditions, nor 
can I see that they were designed to. They are usually for the 
purpose of fitting more completely for entrance to higher technical 



Future Industrial and Commercial Development. 113 

schools, rather than for entrance to the trades and crafts, and so 
fail to meet the wants of the many. It seems imperative, therefore, 
to establish in every city and town of a size to warrant it, and in 
questions of size the school should have the benefit of the doubt, 
a municipal technical or trade school under control of the city 
authorities, or, if found advisable, under joint control of the 
municipality and the board of trade. The school should be fully 
equipped for practical work and an independent evening course 
maintained; tuition should be free, or only a nominal charge. In 
short, what is being done tentatively in a few cities, and often 
under private auspices, should be undertaken as a public obliga- 
tion, not only in justice to the ninety and nine, but, if you please, 
as a solid business investment for the account of the nation. 

I have not touched upon the great value to better citizenship 
which these schools would give. That is self-evident. The social 
fabric would benefit quite as much as the industrial. Nor have I 
anticipated the objections of those who will advise leaving well 
enough alone, and tell us that we are getting along very well now. 
It is a good plan to have your fuel ready before the call for 
extra steam is heard. The only point urged is one of judicious 
preparation for an inevitable demand, and the fact that it accords 
with our standards and ideals. The ideal of American citizenship 
is high, because based upon that highest appeal to action : equal 
opportunity for all. We do not expect all men to be leaders and 
guides ; there must always be hewers of wood and drawers of 
water ; but the state will have discharged its full obligations as 
the protector of society, only when it presents to all a training 
within reach, through which may be diffused a general knowledge 
and a respect for right, which will alike secure our land from 
open attack or the insiduous undermining of vice. 



EDUCATION AND THE STATE. 
By P. L. Campbell. 

The most remarkable result of a century of free government 
is not found in the expansion of territory and enormous growth 
in wealth, of which we so frequently and so justly boast, but in 
the tremendous strides taken by democracy within the same period. 
How doubtful the fathers of the republic were of the extent to 
which the common people can be trusted is well shown by the 
safeguards which they threw around the election of the president 
of the United States and of the members of the senate. They 
were too newlv come from aristocratic and monarchical institu- 
tions to accept fully in practice the inspiring theories of equality 
about which thev so fluently wrote and declaimed. It was one 



114 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

thing to proclaim to the world that all men are born free and 
equal, and quite another to place their lives and property subject 
to the command of a government wholly based on the unrestricted 
will of the people. 

So electors were to be chosen who in their wisdom were to 
select a good man and true as chief executive ; and the senators 
were to be the safe choice of that better part of the people who 
might be elected as legislators in the various states. 

But democracy was not slow to assert itself in the selection 
of a president, practically dictating to the electors who their choice 
should be: and the irony of recent history has shown how wise 
was the aristocratic method of election of senators as compared 
with the democratic selection of the members of the house. 

With the growth of enlightenment we have come to realize 
how glorious a thing freedom is, and how it may develop a citi- 
zenship that may more safely be trusted in the mass than any 
restricted body of temporarily constituted guardians, subject to 
the temptations of practically unrestricted power. 

The organization of machine government in city, state, and 
nation called aloud for a remedy, and the great common people, 
grown conscious of their power and confident of its use, have 
steadily been taking over more and more of the real control into 
their own hands. 

So everywhere we see the movement toward election of 
United States senators by vote of the people, nomination by direct 
primaries, initiative in legislation, chastened by the milder form 
of referendum when the laws made by representative bodies are 
not acceptable to their constituencies. 

This tendency expresses a deep conviction as to the fairness 
and trustworthiness of the people as a whole. In our own state 
and a few sister states practically the ultimate steps, those of 
direct nomination and of direct legislation, have been taken, and 
we are today living under a form of government the most demo- 
cratic in fact that the world has ever known. 

The old machinery of legislation is retained, but the spirit 
of it is controlled by the certainty of a referendum if the laws 
do not conform to the will of the people. No refusal to grant leg- 
islation demanded by the people can be effective when there 
remains the easy redress of direct legislation by means of the 
initiative. 

The government has become in fact a government of and by 
the people ; it remains to be seen whether it shall prove one 
for the people, in the sense of being a sure guarantee of justice 
and a means for the promotion of prosperity and happiness. 

It goes without saying that all will depend on the character 
of the people themselves. Given a body of just, generous, and 
capable men, and there is little need of law either to restrain or to 



Education and the State. 115 

stimulate. Law is, after all, only a device of society to bolster up 
its least efficient members. A state composed wholly of good and 
enlightened citizens certainly would not be in danger of misman- 
aging its own affairs. 

But, unfortunately, common experience teaches us that we 
cannot always depend on all our fellow citzens' being good and 
enlightened, and the measure of the danger in this government 
of ours of today is found in the proportion that may exist between 
the unenlightened and the enlightened, between the bad and the 
good. If education were ever in demand to insure safety and 
prosperity, it is today, when every vital interest of the community, 
and so of the individual, is placed directly in the hands of a bare 
majority of our fellow citizens. 

And even a most insignificant minority may disturb existing 
conditions or delay progress by proposing new laws or calling in 
question those already passed. From the standpoint of the vital 
interests of the state, and of the individual within the state, there 
is no longer any negligible part of our population. Our individ- 
ual safety and happiness depend on the enlightenment and trust- 
worthiness of all. 

To commit ourselves to such a form of government is one 
of the most magnificent declarations ever made of high faith in 
humanity and in the immeasurable possibilities of education. If 
we are to make good this faith, we must apply ourselves as never 
before to the task of turning the light into the dark places and 
of building strength and goodness into the characters of our fel- 
low men. Out of our danger may come our safety, if we but 
realize the supreme importance of the work to be done. It is 
the paying attention to things that is always the surest safeguard, 
and there is nothing to make us pay attention like an imminent 
risk. 

But the argument for education by the state is by no means 
solely on the ground of averting danger. If it were so, many 
who are callous to risk would be unmoved, and the state might 
swing along to destruction without their apathy's ever being over- 
come. But in a commercial age, the argument of gain is not apt 
to fall on dull ears anywhere. 

We are growing to realize more and more every day the 
enormous money value of education, and to understand that the 
chief asset of the state is the trained intellect that it contains. 
What were all our unlimited resources in mine, in timber, in agri- 
culture, were it not for the brains that convert them into wealth ? 
They were here before the coming of the white man, but to the 
ignorant savage they were locked storehouses, and he dwelt in 
povertv and distress in the midst of potential plenty. 

And now, since production has become more a matter of 
brain than of brawn, since the forces of nature have been har- 



116 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

nessed to the machinery of manufacture, and keen intelligence 
and high skill are required for the performance of the duties 
of even common labor, the market value of education is recognized 
as never before. 

Listen to the statistics furnished by a most reliable authority, 
Mr. James M. Dodge, of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers, as to the comparative money value of the trained and 
the untrained : ' 

The boy who leaves school at fourteen and goes directly 
to manual labor, maximum wages, $500 per year, maximum 
reached at twenty-two years ; the apprentice boy, serving full time 
at his trade after leaving the public school, maximum wages, 
$750 per year, maximum reached at twenty-four years ; trade 
school boy, who takes his training of three years in the technical 
school after leaving the public school, maximum wages, $1,250 
per year, with maximum reached at thirty years of age ; and last, 
the college-trained engineer, completing a full four years' profes- 
sional course after leaving the high school, average salary at 
thirty years of age, $2,000, with maximum earning unfixed, 
growing steadily in ability and usefulness through the greater 
part of his life. 

Between the unskilled manual laborer and the highly trained 
engineer there is a difference in earning capacity of $1,500 per 
year, which means a difference in productive ability of that amount 
as a minimum ; for in the long run, wages must measure the 
minimum productive power of the employe, if the employer is 
long to be able to continue in business. The employe must give 
back at least as much as he receives, or his employer fails. 

Education, then, has enabled a citizen to add to the wealth 
of the state at least $1,500 per year more than he could have added 
as an uneducated laborer. The average working life of such a 
man is not less than twenty years, probably much more, and yet 
in twenty years he will have added $30,000 to the state's wealth, 
its taxable wealth, mind you, in return for the investment of some 
seven or eight hundred dollars, at the highest estimate, which the 
state has put into his training. Discount the amount by half, and 
yet we find such a percentage of profit as is found in few other 
investments. 

We have the actual demonstration of results in the enormous 
wealth which this country of ours has accumulated, counted now 
in units of billions instead of millions. Why have our engineers 
taken rank above those of all other countries, and why have our 
manufacturers invaded the markets of the world? Why has our 
country become the strongest money power on earth? We have 
been told by those who have visited us to find an answer to these 
very questions, that the explanation is largely found in the excel- 
lence and extent of our educational svstem. Without a hisrh level 



Education and the State. 117 

of intelligence and skill, who dreams that we could ever have 
reached our present commanding position, or could hope to retain 
it ? The best investment, in mere cash returns, our states have ever 
made is found in the appropriations made for public education. 

I pass over all the higher values in civilization and culture, 
for these are readily granted, and dwell for the present on the 
enormous economic gains which have come to the state through 
education. 

With returns on our past investments beyond our wildest 
dreams, why should we hesitate to invest, even as a purely busi- 
ness venture, still larger sums in education? We boast of our 
great expenditures for public schools in comparison with the ex- 
penditures of other nations ; but how inadequate they are, after 
all, in comparison with the importance of the work to be 
done. For our entire public educational system we spend approxi- 
mately three dollars per capita of our entire population, and for 
the secondary and collegiate part of it we are spending about 
35 cents per capita. 

We have 16,000,000 children in our public schools, but only 
1,500,000 of them get beyond the fifth grade, and about 600,000 
of them enter the high school. Only one-half of 1 per cent of the 
total number ever enter college. And yet we frequently hear 
dire prophesies of evil results to come from over-education. 

The day is not far distant when we will blush, rather, for the 
present inadequacy of our system. We shall then look on the 
high school course as being the standard preparation for the com- 
mon labor of life. Even today the stolid laborer of thirty years 
ago, whose only asset was his muscle, has been largely replaced 
in factory and mine by the keen-witted high school boy, whose 
trained intelligence is worth many times the brute strength of 
his predecessor. 

When the nation has grasped more fully the great truth that 
education prepares for work, rather than for the avoidance of 
it — raising it above the plane of drudgery and glorifying it with 
interest and intelligence- — then shall we begin to educate in ear- 
nest, and place no limit to the extent and amount of training 
offered to those who wiH avail themselves of it. The work oi 
education will become indeed the chief concern of the state, and 
the best and wisest will give to it most liberally not only of their 
means, but of their time and thought as well. 

And what will be the nature of this more fully developed 
educational system? Merely the realization of the old ideals 
toward which wise teachers have been striving for generations - 
the development of the child to the full possibilities of his nature, 
physical, intellectual, spiritual. We shall not educate him merely 
that he shall make money, though he should be able to make 
monev enough for self-support after he is educated ; we shall not 



118 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

even educate him that he shall become a good citizen, though he 
should be a better citizen through being educated; but we shall 
try to make him a fully developed man, knowing that to this high 
estate all other blessings are added. He is educated because God 
has endowed him with a soul, and that soul is the most valuable 
product of all the eternities of creation. His line has survived 
through the myriad accidents of countless generations. He is 
here, though millions of other lines have become extinct ; here, 
marking the highest point of mundane development, and con- 
taining the hope of the future of mankind. Shall we not see -to 
it that every opportunity is offered for "a sound mind in a sound 
body" — that the soul shall become a noble one, both for itself 
and for the future generations that shall be conditioned by it ? 

Development of body, mind and soul — this is the perfect 
work that lies before the larger education of the future. Physical 
training and manual training for strength of body and dexterity 
of hand ; observation, inference, and application for the intellect ; 
love of beauty, truth, and goodness, with faith, and hope, and 
charity, and reverence for the soul — this is to be the broad pro- 
gramme of our public education. 

And the means? Well, the means will be the largest-souled, 
broadest-minded, best-trained men and women of the state, with 
the amplest equipment for their work that money can supply. The 
school buildings of both country and town will be well placed in 
ample grounds, substantial and artistic in construction, sanitary 
in surroundings and plan. 

Much of the work will be done out of doors, with real nature 
work as a center, and many of the ills of mature life will be avert- 
ed by the healthy, happy life of the days spent in school. 

But I would not place the emphasis on surroundings and 
equipment, important as they are, while the great fact remains 
that it is the teacher who makes the school, whether in grammar 
grades or university. Though millions be spent on our schools 
and there be no real men and women to put life and soul into 
them, the money fails largely of its purpose. 

The most serious duty to be performed by any school board 
is that of making a wise selection of a teacher. First of all, 
there should be soundness of nature — good stuff, well seasoned, 
free from knots and gnarls. The call to teach should be there, 
the outcome of an ardent and sympathetic nature, with abundance 
of knowledge to impart and great aptness in imparting it. 

Skill should have been acquired through long study of the 
science of education and abundance of practice in the art of im- 
parting it under efficient supervision. 

Since clearly enough in the work of education the teacher 
is the factor of first importance, it follows logically that no pains 
should be spared to induce the best men and women to enter 



Education and the State. 119 

the profession of teaching, and that the conditions should all be 
made such as to get the largest returns from their labors. Let 
the salaries be made such as to provide for comfortable living, 
free from the worry of the wolf, never far from the door. Let 
old age be made secure by an assured income on retirement frcm 
active service, so that the teacher's best energies may go into his 
work. This work, when the best is given unreservedly, pre- 
cludes the possibility of accumulating money, and if we would 
have it filled with the cheerfulness and contentment that assure 
the greatest efficiency, we must free it from the haunting spectre 
of a penniless old age. 

Why should we not place the great army of peace on the 
same footing as the army that goes to war ? The soldier is cared 
for when his days of activity are over ; the teacher is of no less 
importance to the nation, nor do his duties and his compensation 
admit of greater savings for his old age. 

Make, then, the life of the teacher safe and attractive, give 
to the profession of teaching such recognition as will make it 
more generally sought by the most capable men and women of our 
times, those largest of mind and largest of soul, and the most 
important step will have been taken toward the highest develop- 
ment of our educational system. 

If the demand is great for excellence of ability in the pri- 
mary and secondary periods of education, how imperative it be- 
comes in the college and university. For here, as has ever been 
the case and ever will be, lie the forces which shape the destiny 
of the nation. 

More and more the university is coming into intimate, vital 
relationship with every form of activity within the state. It must 
know intimately the needs of the state if it is to train to the best 
advantage the men and women who are to be most instrumental 
in supplying these needs. 

Note the broad and sound programme of university activi- 
ties as outlined over a century ago by Thomas Jefferson, founder 
of the University of Virginia, the first to see clearly the place of 
the university supported by the state as the logical completion 
of a system of universal education on which a democracy might 
be safelv based. This is his conception of the functions of a uni- 
versity for the state : 

"1. To form the statesmen, legislators, and judges on whom 
public prosperity and happiness are to depend. 

"2. To expound the principles and structure of government, 
the laws which regulate the intercourse of nations, those formed 
principally for our own government, in a sound spirit of legisla- 
tion, which, banishing all unnecessary restraint on individual ac- 
tion, shall leave us free to do whatever does not violate the equal 
rights of another. 



120 Lewis and Clark Educational Congress. 

"3. To harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture, 
manufactures, and commerce, and by well informed views A 
political economy to give a free scope to the public industry. 

"4. To develop the reasoning faculty of our youth, to en- 
large their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the 
principles of virtue and order. 

"•">. To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sci- 
ences, which advance the arts and minister to the health, the sub- 
sistence, and the comforts of human life. 

"6. And generally to form them to habits of reflection and 
correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others, nnd 
of happiness within themselves." 

The theoretical and the practical ; the idea and the act ; to 
know law and obey it; to grasp the theory of political economy, 
and to apply it for the nation's betterment. The university, as 
Jefferson plans it, is to train the practical idealist. The student 
is to simplify life by learning things in their relationships ; to rise 
to a comprehension of principles, and thus give an orderly arrange- 
ment to the seemingly endless complexities of everyday experience. 
Thinking gains in simplicity as it rises. 

So the university must remain idealistic, in the sense that 
the plan must be comprehended before action is undertaken — and 
the highest plan is that of life and thought itself. But the plan 
is onlv the beginning ; it exists for the sake of its own accomplish- 
ment. Therefore the university must give intimate knowledge 
of the conditions under which the accomplishment takes place, 
in other words, of the world as it is ; and also it must give great 
skill in actual performance, so that the largest practical results 
may be most easily and economically attained. Library and labor- 
atory, seminary and field work, philosophy and engineering, all 
these go to the making up of the modern university of the state. 
In it should be found the opportunity for every citizen of the 
state to secure the highest training in the vocation to which he 
is called — training broadly generalized into literature, philosophy, 
and art, science and engineering, and the old-time learned profes- 
sions. 

But the state is no longer content to stop with a system of 
education limited to its regularly organized schools. A broader 
democracy needs a broader education, and if each citizen is to 
participate directly in the function of legislation, it becomes an 
urgent necessity that his education be continued through life. He 
must be kept constantly aware of changing conditions, he must 
be fitted to meet each new problem as it arises, he must grow a 
wiser and safer legislator with each passing year. And so the 
state is extending its activities by means of the great public 
library movement of recent times, with its highly organized meth- 
ods of stimulating and directing the reading of the great body 



Education and the State. 121 

of the common people. Only second in importance now is the 
public library to the public school, and it seems a question how 
long it may remain in second place. 

There is nothing more remarkable in the history of popular 
education than the marvelously rapid growth of public libraries. 

Within the twelve years between 1891 and 1903 the number 
of public libraries supported by taxation increased from 879 to 
3,148, and the rate of increase grows greater each year. In the 
United States today we have in all libraries of 1,000 volumes and 
over the tremendous aggregate of more than 54,000,000 books, of 
which by far the greater part are directly accessible to the general 
public. 

But in reality we are only in the beginning of the libran 
movement. When every town and village has its public library, 
when a system of distribution throughout the country districts is 
made possible through a parcels post, when great central state 
libraries place at the command of every citizen, at telephone call 
if you will, the detailed and accurate statement of the experience 
of the whole world in every department of human activity — then 
will the higher education of the people, the education that follows 
school, be carried on broadly and effectively through the medium 
of the wisely organized and skillfully directed reading of books. 

In conclusion, what is the ideal of government toward which 
we are making with this vast system of public education? In 
answer I would say, one in which, through general enlightenment 
and development of sound character, it may be possible to have 
a minimum of external restraint and a maximum of internal 
sense of obligation. This would be the highest type of free gov- 
ernment, one in which each citizen knows the right and willingly 
does it. Toward such real freedom it is the high privilege of 
America to lead the way. 



3nbex 



PAGES 
Program 7 to 8 

Convocation Address 9 to 23 

William T. Harris. 

Unsettled Questions of the Schools 24 to 40 

Andrew S. Draper. 

The Relation of the Pacific Coast to Education in the 

Orient 41 to 50 

Benjamin Ide Wheeler. 

Education in a Democracy 50 to 61 

F. Louis Soldan. 

School Extension and Adult Education 62 to 75 

H. M. Leipzig er. 

Manual Training 75 to 77 

H. M. Leipziger. 

The Problem of the Rural School 77 to 91 

J. H. Acker man. 

Higher Agricultural Education 9 1 to 101 

E. A. Bryan. 

Education in Reference to Our Future Industrial and 

Commercial Development 102 to 112 

Howard. J. Rogers. 

Education and the State 113 to 121 

P. L. Campbell. 






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